Interview With JP Riggall

Firstly I’ve heard you perform in a few bands over the year but who would you say your biggest over all influences are? From a music perspective its the Beatles and Radiohead, that rarely changes. Still listen to a lot of other stuff; Phosphorescent, Siskiyou, Black Keys, Grizzly Bear, but I also take influence from other things, a good film, story even a photograph, I like put myself in a story when I write.

Between the stuff you’ve performed with bands and the stuff you perform under your own name would you say the writing and creative process has been much different? Hasn't changed in years, I've always enjoyed writing songs and music but love to write songs with similes, so rather than a love song about missing someone, I might write it from the perspective of something else, an animal, a deep sea diver, it just lyrically opens things up a lot more.

What have been some of your favourite gigs you have played so far? The gigs we played in the summer of 2013 with The Broken Broadcast were amazing, played a fair few festivals and it's just exhilarating

You’ve recently released the song “The Vagrant” how has the response been for that and do you have any other releases coming up? A few comments have mentioned it doesn't sound like stuff I've done before, which is nice, to me it's the same as I write the same, it's just different pieces of music. It's got a harder edge I guess, I can't wait to play it live.

During this year and everything that’s gone on how have you been keeping yourself busy creatively? Literally writing more, I feel its been good for me, you have to practice for gigs, so it's like I've been forced to write as record, nothing else you can do. I've been collaborating with some friends too which is always interesting.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to get into song writing and playing? Find someone to jam with, bounce ideas, if you're going to gig and you have 7 songs, write 14 songs then gig your best 7.

You won't know whether a songs good until you've written a lot.

Finally if you could pick five local bands to recommend right now who would it be? Always enjoy watching Mouses, so Ste's solo stuff will be interesting. Grim Lizard are fun, Glen is one of the bestest riffers on Teesside.

Jodie Nicholson and Mt Misery are making waves, The High Plane Drifters have just released their album on Spotify too so that's deffo worth a check.

Links

Facebook// Spotify