Mama's Gun lead singer Andy Platts talked to Female First in a new and exclusive interview about the band's new album 'Cheap Hotel', touring with Lisa Stansfield and more.
Mama's GunOn 'Cheap Hotel'
"It's always personal, you know? It always means a lot and you're always precious about songs. Songs are like children. You want them to be the best version of themselves before you present them to the public.
"You can't make music for anyone, you have to make it for yourself first. It's a cliché, but it stands because it's true. We live to make music first, before anything, so as long as you're happy within yourself doing that, and within the unit, it's just a case of hoping people will be into what you're doing.
"I don't feel pressure, as such. The only pressure I think is from yourself to keep the watermark high, the standard high, be doing interesting work. Just do something special every day with your life. You're gonna have 70 or 80 years on this planet, just do special sh*t (laughs) do you know what I mean? That's gonna help out with your overall happiness I'd say."
On evolving as a band
"When you have that 'wavelength' thing with not one, but four people, whether it's the things you wanna try and accomplish, or experimenting. Whether that's an abstract musical way, or literally in terms of business plan, that kind of one voice matures and grows older. I think that kind of thing is very changed now, from where we were - five blokes that thought we'd give something a punt and see where it went. It means much more now."
Mama's GunOn touring with Lisa Stansfield
"You get half an hour as a support band, you get to play six songs. You can't do your regular 90 minute show with all the twists and turns. You've just gotta put your calling card out there, have your six best songs and try and capture them by the end. I'd say every night we're doing that, you know? We've had them by the last two songs, which is a great feeling."
On pre-show rituals
"It's kind of improvised, there's a band huddle. But one of us will find something stupid that may get repeated, or a silly thing. But we're not too precious about that.
"I do have a habit of making sure every set is dated with the venue, the city and the stage time, on every single setlist, in a certain font (laughs), with the logo. People are superstitious about things like that. No big rituals though, no naked tribal dancing or anything."
On their latest music video
"We did it all ourselves, we don't have the videos made for us. I usually shoot them, direct them, cut them all you know. It means we can be creative while keeping the costs down. We find that doing things ourselves, you get a better sense of us from it, you know?
"We brainstorm a couple of ideas, come up with the concept, take a couple of days to shoot it then a day to edit. So it's pretty quick. If you know what you want you can go straight to it and get it done the best way that you can."
Mama's Gun - 'Cheap Hotel''Cheap Hotel' is out now.