Interviews
David Fendick talks to Britsound
Interview with David Fendick from Vib Gyor, February 1st, 2007. Vib Gyor have been chosen by Britsound as our British Band Most Likely To Succeed in 2007.
RQ: First of all David, thanks for joining us here on Britsound. Let me ask you, how was 2006 for you?
DF: Yeah, it was a really good year. It started off quite slowly but in the middle of the year we had a few big festivals. We headlined one of the stages at the Leeds Festival which is the second biggest festival in England after Glastonbury. Yeah, it picked up really well. It was a really good year for us.
RQ: What was it like playing Glastonbury? Were you nervous before you did that?
DF: I wasn’t really nervous because it was really bad weather so it was basically bucketing down for about two or three days before. Our van stuck about a mile away so we had to carry all our stuff through these fields of mud and rain. We were just basically soaked. I had brought all my best clothes to wear and I think I played in my bare feet and a pair of shorts!
RQ: That's very un-rock’n’ roll, carrying all your own gear through muddy fields isn't it?
DF: Yeah, it wasn’t how it was meant to be planned but it was fun - it was good fun.
RQ: In 2006 also you released a single too, didn’t you? You released Fallen
DF: Fallen, yeah.
RQ: What was the response to Fallen in the UK?
DF: It was received really well. It was played loads on Radio One. Zane played it a lot in the evening and that is sort of one of the coolest radio stations for up and coming bands. We got played a lot on BBC 6, which is another big one - one of the BBC channels - and XFM, which is a really cool station as well. It got a really good response in Britain.
RQ: So to capitalize on that momentum, you are releasing in March a new single, The Secret, aren’t you?
DF: Yeah.
RQ: Now what is the strategy for that? Do you think that is going to, hopefully, expose you to more people?
DF: Yes. It’s an EP. We had the option to either do another single or do an EP. We are such a diverse band. You can hear one of our songs, then the next song we do is completely different. We wanted to do an EP with four or five different tracks on it just to give people more of an idea of what we are about. We’ve done a video for that and The Secret is coming out March 6th and hopefully we are going to try and get out to American in July/August time to do a little tour. We have built up a lot of response over there as well.
RQ: Let me talk to you about America. In a couple of interviews you have said that the reception you have got in America has been a bit more positive than in the UK. Why do you think that is?
DF: I don’t know. I think Americans go for more sincere music, heart-felt music, whereas in England it can be very clique-y and scene-y and you get a buzz band that is very big and fashionable in London for about two weeks and the NME picks up on it. And then two weeks later there is another big buzz band, whereas in America the bands that I see coming out of North America like Arcade Fire and Cold War Kids and stuff like that - are proper bands that have been around for years.
RQ: I did an interview last year with Gomez and they said that the best thing that they did was leave the UK to escape all that ‘fad’ pressure. And now in America, they said they could tour endlessly without the continual comparisons and the pressures being placed upon them by the British media. Is that what you see as well in America?
DF: Well it is funny you should say that. We were just talking about it - literally just two hours ago. The response we are getting from America is a lot more positive. I think we are a lot more suited to the American tastes. The whole point of us coming over in July/August is to get our feet in the door and see what people think of us.
RQ: Exactly. Now, if you come over will you play Chicago?
DF: We are trying to. Money is going to be very tight for us. A lot of the interest at the moment is from people in LA, New York and San Diego so I don’t know. Hopefully, with a bit of money, we might do Chicago as well.
RQ: How did you end up in Entertainment Weekly magazine? That must have been massive for you.
DF: We had this lady come see us called Peggy. She runs a PR company in England. It’s very low-key and not very corporate. She saw us and she sent some information to a guy in Entertainment Weekly that she kind of knew and he really liked the sounds and put a little article in for us that was great. And we got quite a lot of interest all of a sudden from America. It was quite mad.
RQ: What about record companies? Are you signed with a major record label? What’s the situation with that?
DF: At the moment we are not signed to a major - we are signed to an independent, a label called Too Nice which is a quite a low-key independent label in Manchester. The reason we decided to do that is because they didn’t want to tie us in to a long deal and about a year ago we were still finding our feet and finding out exactly what we wanted to do. We want to keep our independence for as long as possible and do what we want to do, rather than people telling us what we should be doing, if you know what I mean.
RQ: When you say keep your independence, are you suggesting that if you were to sign with a major label, you would have to compromise on a few things?
DF: I don’t really know. We don’t really want to compromise. We are very stubborn with what we do. We see bands - I keep coming back to Arcade Fire - but they are getting quite a big following at the moment but they also have a lot of credibility and independence and you can tell that they are given free reign to do what they want to do. Which is in turn what we want to do.
RQ: In an interview you said recently that: “We don’t try and write for anybody else and if people like it, then they like it and if they don’t, well, we are not going to compromise.” Do you think that is a good approach?
DF: Yeah, I mean that is going against the whole scene here in England at the moment - the whole NME scene. I don’t know if you have New Rave over there - that is the big buzz thing going on in England at the moment which is going back to the ‘80s rave scene - bands like The Klaxons and that sort of thing. It’s very big in England at the moment. It’s just a bit, I don’t know, I want to say shallow or something. It’s not what we are about. If we write for ourselves, then we mean it and it’s sincere. Hopefully that shows through in the music.
RQ: We were just talking about how the UK produces so many bands but in many ways it can be a victim of its own success. Do you think in many ways the UK is just too small?
DF: Possibly, yeah. It tries to be cool, so it is a very buzz bandy kind of place. Bands that are doing quite well in America - bands like Snow Patrol and Coldplay do well in America but over here they are always ridiculed for being too commercial. Even Radiohead are getting bad press in England at the moment.
RQ: Why are Radiohead getting bad press?
DF: I don’t know. I think England likes to keep their bands a little secret and then they get some kind of international success and there is a bit of a backlash involved. I don’t really understand why that is.
RQ: Are you a fan of Coldplay? How do you feel about Coldplay’s music?
DF: I think they are great songwriters. I heard of Coldplay when they had some EPs out. They had The Blue Room EP and that way before they got signed to Parlophone. I think they are a great band - I think they are a sincere band. I think Christ Martin might be getting…I don’t know. I don’t really know what to say (laughs). I respect them as a band definitely. They have got good melodies.
RQ: Vib Gyor has obviously been compared to Coldplay amongst others. How important is it to you that you create a sound that is distinctly you? That when people hear you, the say: “Ah, that’s Vib Gyor”?
DF: I think people get shocked with every song they hear from us because the songs that we do are so diverse. You might hear a song and think it sounds like Coldplay - although I don’t hear that myself - and then the next song...I mean if you listen to The Secret - which is our latest single - you should not put that anywhere in the same ball park as Coldplay at all. It’s almost like...some might say it is almost hard rock. I don’t know what you would put it in. Then we do anthemic, Sigur Ros kind of songs. We don’t deliberately try and say: “Okay let us do a Coldplay song.” (laughs). We just write the songs and whatever comes out, comes out. I think that might be why it’s hard for people to label us because we don’t fit into any kind of genre or anything like that.
RQ: Okay, so you have the second single coming out in March, but what about the album? When is the album going to come out?
DF: I would like to think we would be going in and recording it towards the end of the year. What we would like to do is perhaps put out another EP in the summer. I would imagine that might lead with the song Tiny Daggers which is one of our strongest songs. At the end of the summer when we have done all the festivals, ideally we would like to get into the studio and go and do that album. But it is down to who is offering us what - you know what I mean. And what we are prepared to sacrifice. We are so stubborn. We want to make the album that we want to make and if people try and tell us to do otherwise, we will dig our heels in and say: “No, we are not selling out or we are not doing this or we are not doing that.” We just want to do what we want to do.
RQ: What if that will cost you commercial success?
DF: Well, it’s the price you pay, isn’t it? If someone comes towards us and offers us a great deal of money and says: “You can do the album that you want to do and here is the funding and the stuff to do it.” Then we will do it.
RQ: How do you write a Vib Gyor song? How does the process work?
DF: It comes in lots of shapes and sizes to be honest. I would say a third of the songs I write on my own on my acoustic guitar - in my room or at the back of my house. And then with some songs, we will jam; some songs will from a riff or Zane will have like a keyboard riff - which is where Red Lights came from. Whereas The Secret was just something I wrote sitting on the loo actually! Sitting on the toilet! (laughs). Songs just come and you build on them and see what happens.
RQ: How did you write Fallen?
DF: That was something Zane - our keyboardist - and Jonny - our guitarist - wrote. It was a riff that sounded very Jeff Buckley to start off with and we twisted it around and made it into a Vib Gyor song.
RQ: The thing I enjoy about Fallen, as well as many other songs like Church Bell which is another great song - are your soaring vocals. Do you enjoy singing those type of songs?
DF: I love it – it’s the reason I am in a band. I play guitar and I am a sort of a writer but the main reason I wanted to join a band was to sing and sing honest songs. Honest songs about how I felt. It sounds a bit cliched when you say it but that is the whole reason why I joined a band to be honest.
RQ: You formed in 2004, even though on Wikipedia it says you were formed in 2002. What is the truth? Was it 2002 or 2004?
DF: It’s actually neither. Zane and I met in the summer of 2003 and we mucked about for almost a year writing things. I think Permanent Disguise was the only song of that first year that made it. But it was never really serious - just meeting at the weekends, letting our hair down, having a few drinks and just writing. And then in the middle of 2004 it started to get a bit more serious for us. We met Jonny the guitarist and it just started to build and we got a gut feeling that it could do something and it could go somewhere. Then all of a sudden, we met Jonny the drummer and it all took off. Then it was just a matter of finding a bass player and the rest is history, so they say.
RQ: At what point did you go full-time - did you quit all your jobs in Leeds?
DF: I started working less and less. I started to - I don’t know if you have seen Fight Club - I sort of compare myself to Ed Norton in that I started going in later and later to work, my shirt wouldn’t be ironed, my tie would be loose, I hadn’t shaved. My bosses were getting more and more p***ed off with me each week. I just basically wanted them to sack me (laughs). Towards the end of last summer, I think I pushed the button too much. I took a couple of weeks off to go touring and when I came back they just told me not to bother coming in. So around last summer it really sort of kicked in full-time.
RQ: When they told you “that’s it”, what were your feelings? Were you thinking: “Well, it’s good then because this is what I want to do full time anyway”?
DF: Oh yeah. It was always what I wanted to do full-time. I just had to get some money coming in, just to pay the rent and feed us basically. It was always my plan to go full-time with the band.
RQ: Is there a time frame for Vib Gyor? Do you have to have that massive breakthrough within a certain period of time? Have you put a time limit on this thing or not?
DF: No, I think last year we started to get itchy feet about what we were going to do. And I think to be honest - perhaps November/December time - certain people in the band were getting a bit...not stressed out, but we just needed to know what we were doing. We talked at the beginning of the year. As long as we are making music we are happy. We will carry on indefinitely. And that’s what’s important at the end of the day. Really, for us, it is about us five meeting, writing songs, being creative and happy. And if other people get it, then that’s a bonus, isn’t it?
RQ: Exactly, but at the same time is it frustrating when you see these buzz bands that the NME will push that make it massive overnight? Does it frustrate you that some bands are making it so quickly, even if they do disappear?
DF: Yes, it is really frustrating but at the end of the day that is the music business. And I think it’s encouraging when you see British bands like Snow Patrol. Snow Patrol were going for God knows how many years – six, seven years? And they had two or three albums out before Run - which was their big single over here - and then I think it was Chasing Cars in America that got them some recognition. You see things like that and it just reminds you to stay positive and to believe in what you are doing. If you are true to yourself and you don’t sell out and you don’t try and write ‘a song for the people’, then hopefully - at the end of the day - it will pay off in the long run.
RQ: Is it important to you that you are a British band? How does it affect your music?
DF: That is a good question really - I never thought about that. I think what we sing about is a reflection of what we do and where we live.
We live up in Leeds which is sort of a cold, industrial, grey city. A lot of what we write about - like Fallen - is about trying to get out, trying to make yourself better and trying to get out of the town and follow what you want to do in your life and what you believe in. That sense of who we are and where we are from probably comes through in the songs but I don’t know if that is necessarily an English thing. There are probably a million people out there in a million bands who probably feel the same way we do. Can you hear an English slant to our songs?
RQ: You talked about the landscape - the industrial grim, grey landscape. I believe that is reflected in some British music to a certain extent. Would you say that if you could define America as being optimistic, would you therefore define the UK as being pessimistic?
DF: I don’t know if it’s pessimistic, but I think there is a sense of writing about where you live and what you’re doing that possibly could be seen as pessimistic. But I think what we write - all the things that we write about; trying to get out of town and trying to make ourselves better - is an optimistic thing.
RQ: Those themes of escaping - of getting out - are universal, but bands like New Order, for example, who are very distinctly British, have always been massive in America. It’s been interesting to understand why bands that are very distinctly British have made it in America when obviously America is a very different country and culture. It’s a very interesting phenomenon, isn’t it?
DF: It is. I think it’s very interesting when a band - especially one that gets slated in England or doesn’t fit into the infinite little cliques or scenes the British press try and put you in - go over to America and it is honest, sincere music. The Americans, in my opinion, seem to get it. They seem a bit more switched on. Even as I was saying about Cold War Kids, Arcade Fire or Wolf Parade - all of these bands coming out of North America that are getting good write-ups - they are p***ing all over the British bands in my opinion. They’re real, proper bands with good melodies and good songs. It’s encouraging for me to hear some of the bands coming out of America at the moment.
RQ: Let us say it is January 2008, in one year’s time. Where would you like to be with Vib Gyor?
DF: I would like to have an album completed, either out or about to be out. I would really like to have the chance to come to America and have some more people hear our music. We really do want to come out to America – it’s just financial. We will save every last penny we’ve got and we will come out over there at the end of this year and hopefully blow you guys away!
Links:
http://www.vib-gyor.com
http://www.myspace.com/vibgyor
