19.02: Fun-loving funk

Some people take music way too seriously. Praise Jeebus then for bands like The Eleven 37s. Mixing the fun vibes of funk with the raw energy of rock, they play party music of the best breed, sure to get you dancing and leaving you with a smile on your face.

We spoke about crazy dancing, gig size to satisfaction ratios and what they’ll bring on February 19th, when they headline 19.02.

Have you guys always played funk?

Luke (guitar, vocals): Stuff of that genre-ish. We all love the Chilli Peppers. We started off by doing Chilli Peppers covers and then started writing songs together and this is how it turned out. This ended up being what we wanted to play.

Jamie (vocals, keyboard, crazy dancing): I think it took us a long time to get to what we wanted to do style wise.

Luke: It was hard, because we’re all quite different musicians, in terms of what we want to do. And we just try and fit that all in together.

Jamie: It works though. Because we all have so many different ideas. We set fire to each other occasionally, if we don’t like an idea. But that’s alright, you know. The wounds heal. The scars are there for a while…

Luke: I’m trying to keep a straight face here.

What are some of your influences?

Luke: We all have properly different influences. We have lots of different ideas and we all have to decide together whether we like it or not. It’s difficult to mix and match.

Jamie: It’s the perception of what we think of funk.

Luke: That’s been an issue sometimes. Some people are expecting like James Brown or whatever. That’s not really it.

Jamie: We see the fun side of the music.

Luke: Mixing it all up, it’s a good atmosphere to have. And we try to bring people into it as much as we can.

Jamie: It’s nice to do something different. We’ve had 3 EPs now. The first one was a mix of everything: a mish-mash of ideas. We were young. I think we’re progressing all the time.

Luke: It’s gonna keep changing. I dunno where we’re gonna end up but we’re just gonna keep writing.

Jamie: We definitely have an idea of where we’re heading, but if we didn’t progress all the time, we’d get bored of it. And then people would get bored of it. It’s great to keep just writing new stuff all the time.

Do you prefer big or small gigs?

Luke: It kind of varies. We’ve had a few over the past few months that have been really quite big gigs. We played Proud Camden, we’re playing it again at the end of February. We’ve played some much smaller places. We started out doing a lot, hitting the scene, just for practice. Just get our music to as many people as we could. Really small places sometimes.

Jamie: It really does vary though. You can play a massive venue and it can be really amazing lighting and sound, but just be an awful gig. You can play a tiny little place, and the sound can be brilliant in there. It’s literally what happened the other week.

Luke: Yeah at the Urban Bar. We went in there and the sound was just right on the dot, and we played to 15-20 people and it was amazing. It was so much fun.

Jamie: We played Monto like the week before, which is a great venue, but we just didn’t enjoy it as much.

Luke: We couldn’t get the sound quite right, and the crowd just wasn’t as into it as we hoped they’d be.

Jamie: It’s all about the atmosphere, it’s what we thrive on at these shows, all the time. If they’re not enjoying it, we’re not gonna enjoy it. Simple as that. So that’s why we’re always so crazy on stage.

Luke: You should get a load of this guy.

Jamie: Crazy dancing.

Luke: When we started off it was difficult getting the performance right. We were young, and scared of people. Now we’re hitting our stride, getting some good performances in. Before getting the performances right, you have to get the right sound, you need to be able to play it right.

Jamie: You have to be happy with it. It’s exactly like when we’re writing as well, four of us can love a song. This happened the other week, Luke doesn’t mind me saying this. Because I can read his mind it’s fine. But we had a song that we all liked, but Luke wasn’t too keen on it. We had to drop it, because if you don’t all like it, it’s pointless. You’re not gonna perform as a band. Four of us might perform, but that’s not gonna help. All five need to be enjoying that song to get the atmosphere across.

Luke: With different backgrounds there’s always gonna be some disagreement. We just have to keep trying new ideas and finding something everyone likes. It turns out that when everyone likes something, it’s usually very good.

Jamie: That’s definitely what’s happened writing-wise over the past year. We released “Here comes the storm” about a year ago, and we’ve been promoting that for a year. In that time we’ve written loads of songs but I think we’ve only taken two out of there cos not everyone’s been comfortable with the songs we’ve written. It’s good because the response we’ve been getting from these new songs that have come out are amazing. People are absolutely loving them which is great. “Strawberry Swing”, that’s a great one. And it’s not a Coldplay reference, contrary to what people think.

What will you guys bring to 19.02?

Jamie: The best music ever.

Luke: The best.

Jamie: Ever.

Luke: And some fun somewhere in the mix.

Jamie: Some fun, some dancing. I bring strawberries to shows now. They’re good strawberries though. They did complain last time that they were in my shoe, but they were bought fresh! They were quite nice.

Luke: They were alright.

Jamie: Yeah they were good. Obama’s coming, actually. He said he’s pretty excited about it, he texts me about it. He didn’t want to put it in the news or anything.

Luke: He didn’t want to shout out about it.

Jamie: You don’t want to do that, he’s just gonna attract attention.

Luke: He’s just gonna turn up, stay in the background with a hood up, so no one spots him.

Jamie: Yeah I can see him in the office like: “Aaaw yea” and grooving. “Lovin this”. Michelle Obama’s in there just like: “What are you doing? President Obama?”

Luke: What were we talking about?

The Eleven 37s are playing a free gig at Camden Proud on Monday 28th February.

Go to www.beholdthemachine.com for more about The Eleven 37s and the extended interview