We meet The Blackhand in one of there glamorous sheds they reherse in, Wallasey, New Brighton. This is the place were the lads hang out and reherse on there songs. I have been invited here today on a frosty December afternoon, to talk about The Blackhand and how they broke out into the music industry.
They tell me that most of their songs are things that have happend to them in the past, comes deep with in. ''Well, it started off as an idea me and ben had where we started off just jamming in my garden shed (glamorous I know) this is where we wrote the basics to some of the songs we have recorded today like The End has Begun, Chaos Theory and Crowned our kings. We then thought it would be nice to bring it up a level, so after about a month of searching we found Josh "Gilly" Gilroy.'' Not long after thast they found the last member of the band ''Ben Hopkinson.'' I sat down on there swirly shair and started to fire away with the questions.
Wired: So firstly how did you all end up getting together as a band?
NATHAN FORD: Well, it started off as an idea me and ben had where we started off just jamming in my garden shed (glamorous I know) this is where we wrote the basis to some of the songs we have recorded today like The End has Begun, Chaos Theory and Crowned our kings. We then thought it would be nice to bring it up a level, so after about a month of searching we found Josh "Gilly" Gilroy. From that point we just focused on writing songs so we pretty much finished the music for most of the songs, but something was missing. Ohh yeah the vocals... this was the hardest bit, it took the band about 3 months to find a singer that we where happy with and after a few auditions (1) we found Ben "Benji" Hopkinson'' and from then on we lived happily ever after and skipped off into the far distance.
Wired: Very nice! Is it really hard in the music industry?
JOSH GILROY: Its incredibly hard in the music industry. Its more about like who you know than what you know, like it is with anything.. we're fortunate enough to know some pretty incredible people who are helping us out. 'unsigned' means nothing in the industry these days though, with more and more outlets opening up for unsigned band, for example we've just released our debut video onto LAVA TV, which is a sky music channel which focuses on helping unsigned bands, so were happy about that!
Wired: So I could be the WORST singer in the world but if I was best friends with Jay Z then i would be the next lady gaga?
JOSH GILROY: Well yeah, anyone can make it, just depends who you no.
Wired: How did you come up with the band name? Also did the band have any other names before the one now?
NATHAN FORD: Well you can fix anything with auto-tune these days! The biggest thing that happened recently is xfactor used autotune to cover up some of the crappier singers. Luckily for us Ben is a super awesome singer.
It took ages for us to settle on a band name, we came up with a huge long list of them, we had some funny ones though like "Asbestos Sandwich, Pig Benis, Hitlers Erection and Oxymoron".
In the end we just thought of a few serious ones which we then settled on "The Blackhand".
The Blackhand is named after the russian secret organisation whome assasinated Franz Ferdinand (Not the band, but it would be good if they did).
Wired: Were have you performed before?
JOSH GILROY: Well we've played the likes of the british legion and tallulah's late lounge, and we played a show at The Cavern, home of that band, can't remember what they're called, probably rubbish but oh well, but that got us onto a show at Liverpool Academy 1, which was huge for us and saturday just gone we supported a band called The Finest Hour in Sheffield, alongside an acoustic/harmonica playing guy from texas.
Wired: Do you have any upcoming events/ gigs?
JOSH GILROY: we're currently only doing the occasional show every now and again leading up to march as we're recording our debut album which comes outt in march, funnily enough, and then we have a launch gig at The Masque in Liverpool with some awesome support funded by Mean Fiddler. So we're all excited about that!
Wired: Who actually writes the songs and comes up with the lyrics?
JOSH GILROY: When it comes to song writing what usually happens is that myself and Ben Silvester will go back to the good old shed, even in the winter and play around with a few riff ideas we had going ourselves, we then build and expand on them untill we are happy to show them to the rest of the band.
We then come together with Gilly and Benji show them what we got and record it all usually on a mobile phone but if we're lucky the laptop. Benji then goes away and writes up lyric ideas for the music we have and then he comes back and the end product is so good.
We experiment with all sorts of styles at the moment like on our upcomming album "Greetings... From the bitter sweet edge" there are 12 songs, 3 of them acoustic including an acoustic version of our youtube/LAVA tv hit "(The Worlds a) Fire) as well as experimenting with heavy and light music.
Wired: How long have you been together as a band?
JOSH GILROY: we've been together about 6 months? roughly, pretty much
since like just before easter.
Wired: What has been your biggest challenge as a band?
NATHAN FORD: Probably our biggest challenge as a band is time, like when we can do things like gigging, recording, videoing etc. Because I work days, Gilly works weekends and Ben used to work nights but now he has given that job up it was a pain in the bum to sort things out!
I also have to say this bands time keeping skills are impeccable, we made it onto the train to sheffield just as it was leaving, always at least an hour or two late starting up band practice and going on stage late. We now have a rule; who ever is late has to buy everyone a drink now.
Wired: Thats an amazin rule! I bet one of you make the other one late just so you can get a drink out of them.
JOSH GILROY: its hilarious, we ran through lime street covered in gear, i'm trying to get the tickets out of a bag, god it was funny...
Wired: How did you all meet?
NATHAN FORD: We where all in different bands to begin with but we have all known eachother from a very young age, I've probably known Ben & Benji since age 12 when we all started mosslands and Gilly from abour age 14 when I met him in one of his previous bands in mosslands.
So you can say that we have been playing together for about 6 years but just not with eachother since we have been in different bands but our previous bands have all gigged together.
Wired: What advice do you have to people that want to start a band?
JOSH GILROY: advicee hmmmmm?
This is going to sound proper cheesy, but never give up!
Keep checking our facebook for details on our upcomming shows and media the details are:
Facebook.com/theblackhanduk
Myspace.com/theblackhanduk
Youtube.com/theblackhanduk
They tell me that most of their songs are things that have happend to them in the past, comes deep with in. ''Well, it started off as an idea me and ben had where we started off just jamming in my garden shed (glamorous I know) this is where we wrote the basics to some of the songs we have recorded today like The End has Begun, Chaos Theory and Crowned our kings. We then thought it would be nice to bring it up a level, so after about a month of searching we found Josh "Gilly" Gilroy.'' Not long after thast they found the last member of the band ''Ben Hopkinson.'' I sat down on there swirly shair and started to fire away with the questions.
Wired: So firstly how did you all end up getting together as a band?
NATHAN FORD: Well, it started off as an idea me and ben had where we started off just jamming in my garden shed (glamorous I know) this is where we wrote the basis to some of the songs we have recorded today like The End has Begun, Chaos Theory and Crowned our kings. We then thought it would be nice to bring it up a level, so after about a month of searching we found Josh "Gilly" Gilroy. From that point we just focused on writing songs so we pretty much finished the music for most of the songs, but something was missing. Ohh yeah the vocals... this was the hardest bit, it took the band about 3 months to find a singer that we where happy with and after a few auditions (1) we found Ben "Benji" Hopkinson'' and from then on we lived happily ever after and skipped off into the far distance.
Wired: Very nice! Is it really hard in the music industry?
JOSH GILROY: Its incredibly hard in the music industry. Its more about like who you know than what you know, like it is with anything.. we're fortunate enough to know some pretty incredible people who are helping us out. 'unsigned' means nothing in the industry these days though, with more and more outlets opening up for unsigned band, for example we've just released our debut video onto LAVA TV, which is a sky music channel which focuses on helping unsigned bands, so were happy about that!
Wired: So I could be the WORST singer in the world but if I was best friends with Jay Z then i would be the next lady gaga?
JOSH GILROY: Well yeah, anyone can make it, just depends who you no.
Wired: How did you come up with the band name? Also did the band have any other names before the one now?
NATHAN FORD: Well you can fix anything with auto-tune these days! The biggest thing that happened recently is xfactor used autotune to cover up some of the crappier singers. Luckily for us Ben is a super awesome singer.
It took ages for us to settle on a band name, we came up with a huge long list of them, we had some funny ones though like "Asbestos Sandwich, Pig Benis, Hitlers Erection and Oxymoron".
In the end we just thought of a few serious ones which we then settled on "The Blackhand".
The Blackhand is named after the russian secret organisation whome assasinated Franz Ferdinand (Not the band, but it would be good if they did).
Wired: Were have you performed before?
JOSH GILROY: Well we've played the likes of the british legion and tallulah's late lounge, and we played a show at The Cavern, home of that band, can't remember what they're called, probably rubbish but oh well, but that got us onto a show at Liverpool Academy 1, which was huge for us and saturday just gone we supported a band called The Finest Hour in Sheffield, alongside an acoustic/harmonica playing guy from texas.
Wired: Do you have any upcoming events/ gigs?
JOSH GILROY: we're currently only doing the occasional show every now and again leading up to march as we're recording our debut album which comes outt in march, funnily enough, and then we have a launch gig at The Masque in Liverpool with some awesome support funded by Mean Fiddler. So we're all excited about that!
Wired: Who actually writes the songs and comes up with the lyrics?
JOSH GILROY: When it comes to song writing what usually happens is that myself and Ben Silvester will go back to the good old shed, even in the winter and play around with a few riff ideas we had going ourselves, we then build and expand on them untill we are happy to show them to the rest of the band.
We then come together with Gilly and Benji show them what we got and record it all usually on a mobile phone but if we're lucky the laptop. Benji then goes away and writes up lyric ideas for the music we have and then he comes back and the end product is so good.
We experiment with all sorts of styles at the moment like on our upcomming album "Greetings... From the bitter sweet edge" there are 12 songs, 3 of them acoustic including an acoustic version of our youtube/LAVA tv hit "(The Worlds a) Fire) as well as experimenting with heavy and light music.
Wired: How long have you been together as a band?
JOSH GILROY: we've been together about 6 months? roughly, pretty much
since like just before easter.
Wired: What has been your biggest challenge as a band?
NATHAN FORD: Probably our biggest challenge as a band is time, like when we can do things like gigging, recording, videoing etc. Because I work days, Gilly works weekends and Ben used to work nights but now he has given that job up it was a pain in the bum to sort things out!
I also have to say this bands time keeping skills are impeccable, we made it onto the train to sheffield just as it was leaving, always at least an hour or two late starting up band practice and going on stage late. We now have a rule; who ever is late has to buy everyone a drink now.
Wired: Thats an amazin rule! I bet one of you make the other one late just so you can get a drink out of them.
JOSH GILROY: its hilarious, we ran through lime street covered in gear, i'm trying to get the tickets out of a bag, god it was funny...
Wired: How did you all meet?
NATHAN FORD: We where all in different bands to begin with but we have all known eachother from a very young age, I've probably known Ben & Benji since age 12 when we all started mosslands and Gilly from abour age 14 when I met him in one of his previous bands in mosslands.
So you can say that we have been playing together for about 6 years but just not with eachother since we have been in different bands but our previous bands have all gigged together.
Wired: What advice do you have to people that want to start a band?
JOSH GILROY: advicee hmmmmm?
This is going to sound proper cheesy, but never give up!
In the past our old bands have kind of fizzled out (i've always wanted to use the word fizzled in something serious) but with The Blackhand we're all giving it everything we've got
which is fun, tiring and rediculousy stressful, but you've got to do it if you want to get a foothold in the musiz business.
oh, and never do a battle of the bands in The Nelson.
that goes for everybody
NATHAN FORD: Also be sure to check us out on 7 waves radio sometime in the next month or so as we will be making an apperence on it doing acoustic versions of some of our songs maybe even a cover or two.which is fun, tiring and rediculousy stressful, but you've got to do it if you want to get a foothold in the musiz business.
oh, and never do a battle of the bands in The Nelson.
that goes for everybody
Keep checking our facebook for details on our upcomming shows and media the details are:
Facebook.com/theblackhanduk
Myspace.com/theblackhanduk
Youtube.com/theblackhanduk
Thanks for interviewing us, I hope we give you the answers you where looking for.
Wired: Thanks!
Wired: Thanks!
