The Brand New Heavies
The Brand New Heavies formed back in the late eighties and next month the band with be back with their first album in six years.
Sunlight will be the first track to be lifted off that album, it will be released a couple of weeks before the album drops, and we caught up with Andrew Levy to chat about the new tracks and what lies ahead.
- You are about to release your new album Forward so what can fans expect from the new record?
It is kind of a high energy version of what people already know about The Brand New Heavies as it is very dance based with a bit of a disco tinge to it as well.
- Well you have slightly touched on my next question as I have given the album a listen and it is a slight departure from what we are use to hearing from you so why did you decide to take your sound down this path?
Just so that people wouldn’t say ‘they are doing the same thing that they were doing in the nineties’ (laughs). It is just different aspects of what we like playing - a lot of is quite self-indulgent.
Because we have been away from so long it does sort of remind people of what we do and we will see what happens next time.
- This is your first full studio album in six years so what have the band been up to since we saw you last?
The album is made up of a lot of tracks that we have been recording over those six years but we just haven’t been in a position to put it all into one album.
We play live most of the time and have been doing thirty or forty shows a year during that time. So we have been writing, touring, having babies, living our other lives and just enjoying ourselves I think.
- Sunlight is the first track to be lifted off the album and it sees you reunite with N'Dea Davenport so how does this track introduce us to the rest of the record?
It is a good indicator. Unfortunately we couldn’t get N’Dea singing on all of the tracks but Jan is singing and the guitarist Simon is singing. She is singing on some of the more commercial and dance based tracks on the album.
It is just great to hear her voice with The Brand New Heavies again and I just can’t believe that we are able to sit in a studio together after all of this time - it is great. She is part of our legacy and sound and it is fantastic that we are able to do new music together.
- What was it like getting back in the studio together as it has been a while?
The three boys, myself included, have always been together because we have been touring so much but just putting us in a musical setting such as a studio it was like no time had gone really.
You thrown some instruments at us and maybe a small glass of Pino Gris and a lot of music starts coming out - we are just naturally very musical people.
The chemistry was there and that is all you need to know really; if the chemistry is there then you can do anything.
- As you have said you have been playing and writing over the last six years so what made you decided
to get back into the studio?
Getting rid of a very crappy manager, sorry for my French, as we didn’t have the right people around us. It took quite a while and there were a lot of obstacles thrown at us legally to get rid of our old manager; he just wasn’t right and just wasn’t very experienced.
That alone took us a year with lawyers and various things going on. I felt once that was done that that really was a weight off our shoulders and we went on to restructure our business and our finances and we just thought ‘now is the time.
We are free of all that it is time to move forward’ - which is part of the album title. We just wanted to remind people, if they were interested, that we are still here.
- You have produced the album yourselves so how liberating a process was that to be able to go into the studio and write what you want and record what you want and therefore you have a record exactly as you want it?
It is liberating but it is also time consuming at the same time. You do get a little bit self-indulgent because you don’t have anyone banging on the door saying ‘the solo is too long, there are too many drums at that point or the middle eight is too flowery’.
We are so lucky to be able to do that and make music today because there is so much competition out there - tons more than there were when we first started out. But it has reminded us that we can do it and it is not that difficult for us to do it - it has been good.
- How have you found the early response to the new single and album so far?
We have been getting some great responses from our radio plugger and it has already been play listed on some radio stations; Jazz FM is not a huge radio station but it is a great indicator that people still… or people are connecting with that single. I think Radio 2 are about to play list it.
It is almost like going back to the beginning, back to the late nineties, and re-educating people that this great institution that is The Brand New Heavies is still alive and kicking (laughs).
- You will have a lot of long standing fans who will be coming back to you with this album but it will also introduce you to a new generation of fans so are connecting with the younger audiences?
Really just through doing interviews with yourselves and making sure that we are relevant on the internet and not just making music for the old fuddy-duddies that we may be seen as.
We just have to out there all over the internet and all over Facebook and we just hope that people will get the chance to hear it.
- This album sees you introduce a new vocalist in the form of Dawn Joseph so how did that collaboration come about?
It is difficult to keep the original line-up together as N’Dea has other projects going on and we are busy and so it is not always easy to get all four of us together to do the shows.
So we thought why not introduce some new talent to our band - it is quite a difficult question to answer. We just wanted to showcase some new talent.
- What does she bring to this new record? And how did you find working with her?
It is all very new as we haven’t done any shows and we have barely been in the studio with her so it is all about to play itself out.
She is relatively unknown but she has been in the industry for a while doing backing vocals for Cliff Richard and other quite large artists, but never in her own right. So we just thought that it would be great for people to hear her with us.
Working with N’Dea now is, at the moment, more of a collaborative thing rather than her actually being a signed member of the band. But who knows what will happen in the future.
- The Brand New Heavies formed in the late eighties so how have you seen the industry change in the years that you have been in it? And has it changed for the better?
We are a lot older now and you have to just go with what the kids want. I could so easily say that ‘all music is crap now’ but it is not, it is just different. Music is different as there is a faster turnover and young people access music differently; you don’t buy an album and sit there and listen to the tracks one after another you just pick and choose.
I think people listen to a lot more varied music now because it is much more accessible. Luckily for The Brand New Heavies we play live and we have not stopped since 1988 and that industry hasn’t really changed because people still go to gigs and a large part of our income comes from live music.
In terms of change I think it is great as I am buying stuff now that I would never buy because it is so easily available.
- Obviously we have seen the rise of Facebook and Twitter over recent years so have you embraced these new ways of connecting with your fans?
We get the whipped cracked a lot by our manager saying that we have got to answer the Twitter and get on the Facebook.
I am quite a private person and I have just started a new family and so I am not as active as I should be on Facebook on Twitter (laughs). It is fun and we had a live Twitter interview and I was answering questions for people all over the world - it was fun.
- You have developed as songwriters and musicians over the years so how do this new album compare to records that you have made in the past?
Hopefully it is at the same level and the same quality as the bigger albums we have made in the past. I do want to answer this in a clever way but we really just do what we do best and we make sure that we don’t put any dross on the album and we always write three times more than what we need.
Another thing is we haven’t really released that many albums, we have released four studio albums ever, so there is still so much stuff in the pipeline that we need to get off our chest. We just hope that it is good quality music that will make people smile and dance.
- Are we going to be seeing you back out there on tour to support the release of the album?
We are playing at Koko in London on May 10th and it will be with O’Dea - I know our hardcore fans love here and we love here as well. That is the big re-launch show but we will be playing all over as we have shows in Japan, South Africa, Germany, and Holland from next month.
We will also be doing some stuff over in the States as well as we have a big fan base over there. But London on May 10th is the big one.
- Well I was wondering how the new tracks had been received oversees?
It has been slightly delayed because we haven’t all of the licensing deals outside of the UK but there does seem to be more of a buzz than we thought.
But we are kind of in trouble now because they want the album at the same time, everything is released digitally, but we are a bit behind there.
It is tripping us out because it has been so positive. I think people are just so hungry because they have not heard anything in six years and it has overwhelmed a little bit. We are already thinking about the next album as we want to keep the flow going.
We will book some time at the end of the year when we can start thinking about another one. It has been ten times better than we thought.
- Finally what is next for you as we progress through this year?
We are going to do a side project that is just instrumental music - almost going right back to our roots - and we are going to record that in a few weeks time. We are also going to another heavy rhyme experience; it is a live album using rappers. We did that in 1992 and now we are going to do another one.
We are just going to keep recording and just hope that there will not be as long a gap as we have done with this latest record (laughs).
The Brand New Heavies - Forward is released 29th April.
The new single Sunlight is released 15th April.