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Rock and Pop
Hard-Fi Tickets
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Hard-Fi Tickets and Concert Dates
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The British punk-popquartet known as Hard-Fi consists of singer Richard Archer,guitarist RossPhillips, bassist Kai Stephens anddrummer Steve Kemp. A phenomenal success in theirnative England, Hard-Fi havereached #1 on the U.K.charts with their debut album Stars ofCCTV and achieved two top-ten singles, "Cash Machine" and "Hard to Beat."The band is now poised to take American audiences by storm with the album's U.S. release onMarch 14, 2006.
Hard-Fi's RichardArcher spoke with Ticketmaster while the band was playing a select number ofshows across the U.S.,before returning for a larger, multi-city tour in March.
Tick...
See MoreThe British punk-popquartet known as Hard-Fi consists of singer Richard Archer,guitarist RossPhillips, bassist Kai Stephens anddrummer Steve Kemp. A phenomenal success in theirnative England, Hard-Fi havereached #1 on the U.K.charts with their debut album Stars ofCCTV and achieved two top-ten singles, "Cash Machine" and "Hard to Beat."The band is now poised to take American audiences by storm with the album's U.S. release onMarch 14, 2006.
Hard-Fi's RichardArcher spoke with Ticketmaster while the band was playing a select number ofshows across the U.S.,before returning for a larger, multi-city tour in March.
Ticketmaster: You're currently playing a handful of showsacross the U.S.Isthis your first time playing in the States?
Richard Archer: It's actually ourthird time. We came to South by Southwest (a music festival in Austin,Texas) lastMarch. We did a couple of shows there. Then we did a two- week tour in June, justto come out and dip our toe in the water really. This is our first tour where wehave some radio going on and we're in the press. We're still touring when thealbum's not out yet. But it's good to be playing. I think we're coming back inMarch when the album's out. That will be an exciting time. It's exciting nowtoo. We go to this radio station, now to that radio station. We talk to thepromoters at gigs, and they're like, "We think you guys are going to be huge."We don't get carried away or anything, but it's nice to hear people say that.It's quite exciting.
TM: Are there any particular cities or venues you'veenjoyed playing so far? null
RA: They're all kind of excitingin their own way. We did Detroit.I love a lot of '60s soul music and, more recently, Eminem and the WhiteStripes. So Detroitwas a big thing for me. We went to the Motown Museumand stood in the studio where Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and all these peoplehave recorded amazing records. That was huge. And then in Chicago we went to Chess Records. Now we'reoff to San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco.That will be amazing. And we end up in Seattleas well. We're all Sub Pop fans. That will be a cool moment, if a bit rainy.
TM: How did the band first get together?null
RA: I'll try to do a brief Hard-Fihistory. I was in a band called Contempo. We were singed to London Records. Itwas at the time when U.K.dance music was king. Bands just weren't given any notice. No one really caredabout them...Then usual story: record label gets taken over by a bigger one. Peopleget made redundant. People there don't know what to do with you...Our A and R mangot made redundant there. We managed to negotiate our way out. We were allbroke ...Eventually the band fell apart. That band was my whole life. At the sametime, my father died. I found myself back at home with this big hole whereeverything I knew had been before. The guy who had signed my old band, WarrenClarke, got in touch and said, "Look, I'm fed up with working for labels whoare run by people who don't know what they're talking about. I've always lovedyour music. I signed you at Londonand I want to sign you at my own label. I haven't got any money, but I've gotbelief and I've got passion. I want to make this work."...I started writing somenew songs, started trying to put a band together. I found a drummer quiteeasily. The drummer was doing drums for a DJ friend of mine....I wanted someonewho could play all these different styles: slow, dub, hip-hop, all thisdifferent stuff. And he could do it. So then we started looking for aguitarist. Ads in the paper. And it took us ages. So many people turned up. Wewanted people who would sweat blood for this band. Live and die for it. Peoplewould turn up who all they'd do was solo in front of the mirror, or they're infive or six bands at once, or they like their jobs too much to actually take asickie here and there to do gigs or whatever. We were pulling our hair out,thinking, "Are we ever going to find anyone?" So I started looking around myhometown, thinking there probably won't be anyone here but you never know. Iremembered that I used to chat with Kai, our bass player, down at the pub...And I put the word out on the street: "Where the hell is he these days?"Eventually he got in touch. I gave him the CD. Two days later he turns up andhe plays it perfectly, he sings perfectly, he looks great...We got three down. Wetry to find a guitarist. My friend says to me, "My brother plays guitar." AndI'm like, "Yeah yeah. Just a kid. He must sound terrible." I'm going into thishi-fi store in Staines, where we live, tolisten to the mix of my demos on their expensive speakers, and there's this guythere who's like, "Who is this playing guitar?" And I'm like, "It's me. What'sthe problem?" He's like, "I can play better than that." And I'm like, "Comedown then and let's check you out." And he comes down and he's so tight. He'snot trying to solo all the time, He's just on it. It turns out he's my mate'sbrother. A month later we had our first gig.
TM: Many of the songs on Stars of CCTV originally appeared on a self-released, low-budgetversion of the album in 2004. When you had a chance to re-record the tracks ina professional studio for wider release, you decided to keep the original,lo-fi recordings. What was the thinking behind that? null
RA: We made the mini-album forabout 300 pounds or 500 dollars. And that was basically the cost of rent forour little room. We got everything through rehearsing, because there wasnowhere to rehearse where we lived...When we dealt with the major label, theywere like, "You can go to Abbey Road and record this with whoever you like." Wewere like, "This record sounds great. No one else sounds like it." A lot ofrecords are polished to the point of having no humanity or no soul. Whereasthis record, it's there. There are mistakes in there. You can hear the planesgoing over but that makes it sound human. It gives it a sense of time andplace. So we ended up keeping the tracks on the mini-album. They're the tracksthat you can buy when the (full-length) album comes out in March. We recordedfive new tracks in the same studio and mixed them in the same place. Me and theproducer, Wolsey White, would drive around in his 20-year-old BMW, 'cause wecouldn't afford to go into the studio with the big speakers. It was all aboutwhere people listen to the records. They listen to them in the car. They listento them in their bedroom, in the kitchen, in the club, So that's where we'd mixthem. Drive around in the car and we'd go, "We need some more bass." Or maybe, "Thevocals are a bit quiet." Then we'd go back in, readjust it, burn another CD andgo drive around with it a bit more. And what's out there is the album we madethat way.
TM: People in the U.S. are just starting to hear yourmusic. In the U.K.,though, you've already become a huge success. Did you expect your debut albumto do so well? null
RA: I'll be honest with you. Whenwe made this record, we always believed in it. We always believed that themusic could stand up to anything else out there. We made this record in an old24-hour cab office on a broken down computer that kept crashing and budgetequipment. I also knew that we weren't doing what was in at the time. Weweren't doing what the hot, new sound was, because we were never about that. Wejust did the music we loved. If you tryto follow a scene, you're always late. It's always gone by the time you getthere. I thought that the music we were making probably wouldn't appeal to thesort of people that were the tastemakers, if you like...I knew it was going to bea real tough journey and it'd take us a long time to even get to the stage ofgetting the record out. A lot of heartache, frustration, blood, sweat andtears. But we always believed the music was good and could stand up to it. Ifyou could have said to me a year ago that we'd have a #1 record, a top tensingle, sold out tours, play in front of 130, 000 people with Green Day at MiltonKeynes, be on stage with The Specials...tour the states, tour the U.K., godouble-platinum, get Mercury nominations and Brit nominations--that would haveseemed like a whole world away, a lifetime away. It was just like dream land.But it's gone that way. Part of that is because we've finally managed toconnect with those people that we wrote these songs for. It took a while to getto them. But now we're getting there and it's kind of taking off for us.