TLOBF Interview :: Copy Haho

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When playing live, Copy Haho are definitely amongst the most captivating of the new crop of unsigned talent about at the minute. Consisting of Joe (vocals/guitar), Richard (bass), Stuart (guitar) and Rikki (drums), they’ve recently released single ‘Wrong Direction’ on the exclusive Too Pure Singles Club label. Later on that evening they’d be storming through a 40 minute set in support of Los Campesinos!, snapping two guitar strings, blowing a microphone and breaking it’s stand along the way. They’re a beautiful mix of chaos and precision, constantly seeming to be on the brink whilst actually being in perect control. In conversation, they’re just as engaging, being both opinionated and refreshingly realistic – just don’t ask them about where they grew up…

We heard about you being robbed – what happened?
Richard: We left the van, as you do – you can’t take it inside – came back, window smashed, bag gone, everyone sad. About 24 hours later, window fixed, my debit card a little bit sadder, Joe’s bag still gone, Joe’s parents didn’t seem to care.
Stuart: I wasn’t that sad – none of my stuff got taken

That aside, how’s the tour going? Is this your biggest tour yet?
Richard: I guess so. We’ve been on tour before as a band, but I guess that this is the one in which the shows have been busiest. It’s been really fun – I knew Gareth and Neil (Los Campesinos!) before, but everyone else is new. Them included are very nice people

And how was Swn festival? Who did you see and did you manage to meet Huw Stephens?
Rikki: We’ve met him a few times now
Richard: I hung out with him when he DJ’d in Aberdeen a couple of weeks ago. He’s amazing. At Swn it didn’t really feel like we were playing a festival because we were just there for the day and we played one venue.
Rikki: It looked like a theatre, which was pretty good.
Richard: I saw everything where we played. I saw Dananananaykroyd, Munch Munch, Internet Forever and Sparky. We didn’t see anything else, but we went to the silent disco. That was totally ace.

You’ve just released your latest single, ‘Wrong Direction’, on Too Pure Singles Club. How did that come about?
Stuart: We got to go to Abbey Road to master it, so that was pretty good. It’s amazing – we got to see our vinyl get cut as well
Richard: We just got an e-mail asking if we’d like to do the single, then we recorded it maybe two weeks later, finished recording on the Tuesday at midnight, flew down to London at 6 a.m., mastered it, gave it to the label and got a bus back up to Glasgow and played a show pretty much as soon as we got back. It was pretty intense but really fun.

Have you got any news on an album yet?
Joe: Basically, what needs to happen is someone needs to give us money to record it – until that happens we can’t really do it. The songs, I think, are almost there. We’ll stay positive. But in January or Gebruary we’re going to try and go to Ireland, and then Europe hopefully. We like playing in the UK, but we’ve done it a lot, so we’d like to go and play in a different country. By about summer we should have a record coming out, because, if by then we haven’t recorded it, then it’ll never happen. Well, by that time we’d like to have it out there.
Richard: Joe’s really negative all the time…
Joe: Just realistic. So: touring and then album.

Is there anyone in music who you dislike at the minute?
Joe: The View? But only because someone compared us to them in a review and it made me sick.
Richard: That’s such an easy target.
Stuart: I met him and he was the biggest arsehole.
Richard: So the official Copy Haho line on The View is that they’re a bunch of arseholes, but I think most people know that including their fans and their parents.
Joe: And them.
Richard: I think they’re too stupid to form any thought whatsoever
Joe: This would be good if it turned into an actual feud. Maybe we’d get famous from it.
Richard: It’d just be another excuse not to go to Dundee

Everywhere that’s written about you starts with a paragraph on you being from a small town in Scotland. What’s it like in Stonehaven?
Richard: It’s not like the back and beyond or anything, there are 10,000 people and it’s 15 minutes on a train to Aberdeen. We grew up with internet and television—
Stuart: Nickelodeon—
Richard: I don’t think it’s really any different from growing up anywhere else in terms of missing out on things.
Rikki: Every show someone will mention that we’re from Stonehaven, so that’s probably why everybody writes about it.
Richard: Hardly any people grew up in, I don’t know, Shoreditch, they haven’t been going to secret gigs every day since the age of seven so, I can’t imagine it being any different to growing up anywhere else in the UK.
Stuart: I think it’s got its benefits
Joe: You get bored pretty easily when you’re a teenager. But maybe that’s good for music?
Richard: So good and bad points like anywhere else.

Photo courtesy of Miriam Baynes

Copy Haho’s single ‘Wrong Direction’ is available to purchase on 7” vinyl online at http://www.toopure.com/