For those readers that haven’t heard of Rai Kah Mercury could you tell us a little bit about yourselves your story?
Hi, this is Tomas answering for the band. Rai Kah Mercury is a four-piece rock band, made up of Tomas Crean on lead vocal, and guitars, Reece Schaefer on bass, Nathan De Giorgi on keys, and Josh Lowe on drums. Josh is 20 years old, the rest of us are all 19.
Like so many young bands Tom, Reece and Nat got together at high school, though we had dabbled even earlier than that as juniors with a band we called Toxic Crocodiles, before Tom’s voice had broken!
Things got serious when Josh came on board and we knew we had something we could present to people.
We’re a little hard to pigeon hole bringing a bit of everything to the table, at time bluesy, heavy, grungy, punky, soulful, melodic, folksy, even psychedelic at times.
It can be a negative as there are audiences that migrate to sub-genres but in the long run, our appeal should be wider.
Who inspired you to get on stage and perform?
So many artists, listening to parents music, being taken out to gigs from a very young age.
Seeing The Cult when I was 10 years old, then especially Vintage Trouble in Newbury, when I was 12 years old, was a critical moment, it was up close and personal, I was mesmerized by Nalle Colt’s effortlessly cool yet passionate and expressive guitar playing, and Ty Taylor’s force as a frontman channelling the likes of Otis Redding and James Brown.
A little later, on my 15th birthday, I was invited into the Green Room at The Rescue Rooms in Nottingham by Blues Pills, they spent a couple of hours talking with my Dad and myself. Just as with Vintage Trouble, watching Dorian Sorriaux and Elin Larson just confirmed that I wanted to sing and play the guitar and from the next morning, everything was clear.
I would also say that seeing Black Rebel Motorcycle Club has inspired us all in terms of style and music.
Are there any particular albums or artists that have stuck with you throughout the years?
I have a particularly strong connection to feel rather than technical guitar players, Paul Kossoff of Free especially, and also a bit of chaos like you get with Neil Young or Jonny Greenwood when they jam out.
I loved listening to the singing of Paul Rodgers, Bono, and Kelly Jones when I was younger, of newer singers Phil Campbell of The Temperance Movement, Jay Buchanan of Rival Sons, Paulo Nutini, and Jack Savoretti have carried that torch. I also like the melancholic style of Jason Molina and Thom Yorke and that comes through in some of our output.
Rival Sons have just got better and better, their latest album Feral Roots is destined for classic status, and they put on the best show I’ve seen this year at The Roundhouse.
As for albums, where to begin, or end, so I’ll offer one masterpiece that has everything, OK Computer by Radiohead.
Could you tell us a bit about the writing/recording of the ReverbNation competition winning track “I Fell In Love With a Feeling”?
I’d been playing around with the elements such as the riff and the chord sequences for a while and it just hung together in a jam session in rehearsal and morphed into I Fell In Love With A Feeling. Lyrically it’s kind of dreamy, trippy, and whilst it is quite long at nearly seven minutes we wanted to recreate in the studio the way we build our jams in live performance, and the reaction we’ve had to the final couple of minutes from those with enough patience has vindicated that. Imagine a radio edit of Neil Young’s Down By The River cutting out the jams? No, nor can I! In the studio, it was pretty much one take for the main part, with Ryan Pinsen at RML Studio in Wolverhampton doing his magic to bring it to life.
What do you think makes a good live performance?
That depends entirely on the kind of artist, for some, it’s as much visual as aural. We’re not a showy band, you won’t find us dressing up like Kiss, foot on monitor, or crowd surfing, we want the music to provide the connection, to feel the adrenaline flow between us and the audience, if that’s happening we’ll look plenty cool (!), we’re as happy to see people grooving as moshing. We mix things up musically, so hopefully, that keeps it interesting, and we want the audience to feel the show went by too fast and wanting more at the end.
What is the most interesting venue you have performed at?
The Tin at The Coal Vaults in Coventry is where it started for us as a performing band, it’s cozy and quirky.
The Garage in London for the history and the bands that have gone before us there and wondering how they managed with the tiny green room for supports!
Oh, and Reece’s Grandma’s house for her 50th!
What do you think is missing from the music industry today?
I’m not sure there’s anything missing as such, other than money. It’s a well-worn debate but perhaps we’d like people to spend their money on trying original bands rather than tributes or covers which is where the money seems to be at the level we are currently at.
I once went to see Scorpion Child and Blues Pills, two great bands touring from overseas, there was 20 people in the room, whereas downstairs was packed with people all dressed up in black for a metal covers band. For a fiver upstairs they could have been watching amazing original music, which they absolutely would have enjoyed, that’s a bit disheartening.
On the plus side, despite all the doom and gloom news of venues closing down, on our local scene at least there is no shortage of venues to play and it seems for everyone that close another pops up, there’s open mic everywhere if anything there’s almost too many bands. Still, the best paying venues want punters and that means tributes and covers so being an originals band requires a lot of self-belief and perseverance.
There’s also an abundance of services, from rehearsal studios to recording engineers, PR, photographers, merch producers, distributors, and of course the likes of Reverbnation is invaluable if you work at it, even if you don’t like streaming you can get your music out there on Bandcamp for nothing.
Here at Artistic Echoes, we are always on the lookout for new artists do you have anyone to recommend?
Of those we have played with Valeras is really stepping up now, quite a unique pop-rock sound, Ivory Wave has something special going on, great 90s Madchester live vibe and very understated musicians, our good friends at Violet create a wall of sound that would grace bigger rooms, and Murmur hit hard with a heavy grunge and stage charisma.
What plans do you have for the rest of the year?
We’ve just come from a headline show in Birmingham which was amazing, great audience reaction, and we come into our own with a longer set.
We have a show planned at The Salisbury Hotel in North London on 8 November, as main support to LOCKS which we are really looking forward to, great line up and the venue looks amazing.
Hopefully there will be some more studio time which means we can get another single out before the end of the year if possible, and plan ahead for 2020 with more shows and more new music, and also step up our PR game with images, video, merch, etc, it all takes time to come together, but we are really excited about the music still in the pipeline.
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