With a tour with Scouting for Girls under their belts Go:Audio's star is quickly rising and with an album, Made Up Stories, on the verge of release the four piece will soon be headlining gigs of their own.I caught up lead singer James to discuss their new album, touring with Scouting for Girls and what the future holds.
You are fairly new to the music scene so who are Go:Audio?
Go: Audio are a band from all over the place, mainly the midlands, there’s myself, Josh, Zack and Andy and we have been together about four to five years just writing music that we love and listen to ourselves.
And how did you guys meet?
I met Josh around five years ago, just through a friend, and Zack is Josh’s brother and Zack was at university, then he came back, and he could play guitar and me and Josh, at the time, were writing songs and we were like ‘do you want to play guitar?’ So we started a band and we got Andy on board about a year and a bit later.
you will be releasing your debut album Made Up Stories later this year what can we expect from it?
I think it’s a mish mash of a lot of thing there are some serious songs, fun songs, dancey songs and more rockier songs, I think that there is something there for everyone. We recorded it about a year ago, we have been writing for the past five years on and off, and then we recoded the vocal with Andy Green, who did Keane, The Feeling and Scouting for Girls. We just went to a barn in south Kent and got drunk for three months, which was very nice. No it’s something that we did and we are pretty proud of it.
How does the writing process work for you?
It differs from band to band but for us we mainly write around a laptop, a big part to do with our sound is an electronic beat, so we just get a beat going on the laptop and write with an acoustic guitar and eventually we demo it up and record it properly.
You are singed to Epic Records how did you go about getting discovered, for want of a better word?
We just started to write songs and demos then we started to load them onto the internet, and I think MySpace played a massive part of getting us noticed, it’s so easy to extend a link to a record label and for the label to click onto a link instead of sifting through a thousand CDs per day. We started gigging, it’s important to get out there and be seen, then we loaded up some songs onto MySpace and a website featured us as their Single of the Week and we started to get a bit of interest that way.
How would you describe your music or your sound?
We get asked this a lot and we have come with this it’d rock music that you can dance to but dance music that you can rock out to.
And where does the name Go:Audio come from?
Well it doesn’t really mean anything we just wanted to come up with a relatively cool sounding name which was going to reflect our music, which is quite fun. We went through a lot of band names and it’s so difficult to find a good one, then you find it’s taken. So we just went with it and we are really happy with it.
You have been tagged as the hot new band to watch for this year how much pressure does that put on you, if any?
Not really it’s quite funny that people that it’s a massive complement and we are just going to keep on doing what we are doing, and that is just make music.
What are the relationships like in the band Josh and Zack are brothers?
Well it’s quite funny really because a lot of people would think that brothers would argue but it’s not like that all they get on really well, better than just normal mates, I just spoke to them and they are playing a computer game against each other. They are just really nice people and we all get on we’re like brothers so it’s all good.
In the last six months you have toured with Scouting for Girls and The Blackout how have you found the whole support act experience?
It’s brilliant we have really enjoyed playing live shows and it’s great to play with bands that bring in large crowds, especially Scouting for Girls who are playing crowds of three or four thousand people, and for us to get exposed to that amount of people is great.
How important is it for you to get out on the road?
It’s very important it’s something that we love doing, so when we go back home we get board, it’s something that we just love and think that it’s a really important thing to do if we are to make the band successful.
You have been touring with the likes of Scouting for Girls, who are a very established band, what kind of things did you learn while you were on tour with them?
We learnt everything really where the band are they have obviously worked really hard for it and it’s something that we hope to emulate and go on to play those venues ourselves.
and have you got a headline tour planned?
Yeah we did our first London headline show three weeks ago at the Academy and that was really really good. We haven’t got a tour but we have a few headline shows if you go to myspace.com/goaudioband they have got all our dates, and they are constantly being updated.
Finally what is next for you?
We are about to do the next half of the Scouting for Girls tour because Roy, the lead singer, lost his voice half way through the last tour we had to cancel dates, so we have six or seven dates and start next Wednesday. Then we are doing a few festivals just constantly gigging, recording and getting ourselves out there.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw