To us the public, it would almost seem as if you came out of nowhere with arguably one of the singles of the year. What was the transition like into the mainstream market?
KEVIN: “Yeah it was very surreal. Reggie, Owen and myself have been playing together for in complete obscurity in our home town of Jacksonville Florida. But yeah, To go from playing to nobody, to all of a sudden being in the main stream audience, it is a mind f**k, but it’s exciting and it’ what we’ve been working hard at for years”
When I first heard ‘I’m Not Gonna’ Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You,’ I couldn’t really liken it to anything past or present. I couldn’t pin point any specific influences. Would you care to enlighten us?
KEVIN: “That song has been very kind to us and it came very quickly and easily. As far as influences go, when we started the band we decided to kind of cherry pick our favourite parts from across different genre’s. On the record there is Motown girl group stuff, disco, funk and a lot of British bands throughout the 80’s and 90’s, like Pulp, stuff like that.
In the U.K in particular, your songs get a lot of exposure and plays in clubs and o dance floors. Is that an intention of yours when you’re writing songs? ‘Lets write a song that’s going to fill a dance floor?’
KEVIN: “Yeah it has been thus far. One of the elements that we’ve always wanted in our songs has been that dance element. We’ve been influenced by music we were listening to when we were out getting trashed on the dance floor. We don’t strictly want to limit it to that, but we want something that you can at least move to.”
I had a friend of mine who had the mentality that if you do something that you love for a living, then it’s not like ‘work,’ obviously a lot of hard work’s gone in to what you guys have done, but do you agree with that ethic?
KEVIN: “I don’t really agree with that, cos’ there’s been a lot of hard work gone into this. I mean we obviously love the nature of the work, but it’s still work. Doing interviews is great, playing shows is great, but there’s other things you just have to do which aren’t so great. It’s one of the aspects being in a full time touring band. There’s been times over this past year when we’ve been exhausted and needed a couple of fays off. But we’re not complaining.”
How are you finding the U.K audience?
KEVIN: “We were back here in July/August. The U.K audience has been one of the best. The U.K was the first to pick up on us, I don’t know if it’s because the music lends itself more to the British ear or what? Stuff considered indie in the U.S is a lot more main stream over here, so we get a lot of exposure in the U.K.”
What’s the plan for 2009? Do you have any idea where you want to take the sound?
KEVIN: “We definitely want to do a new record next year, and we want to do an E.P for January. We’ve been playing around with some new tunes. We don’t want to stray too far from that dance/pop music element.”
From a man who’s effectively found his calling, any advice for the student readers close to entering the big bad world?
KEVIN: “We’re all in our mid to late 20’s, and there were times when we were close to calling it quits. So my advice would be stick with what you really want to do, your dream. We’ve been playing and failing in bands since we were 15, and it was a matter of sticking with it and being dedicated to it.
Interview By Graham Turner
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