Monday, April 2, 2012

An interview with...Embassy (Part 1)



Embassy are a band from Falkirk who have a real passion and charisma when it comes to creating music and playing live. The five piece include Alasdair Marwick on vocals, James McManus on lead guitar, Aidan Buhrmann on rhythm guitar, Callum Barret on bass and Ian Simpson on the drums. 

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting up with James and Aidan to talk a little about themselves, what they think of other local bands and their opinions on the Glasgow Music Scene. Check part 1 out here.

Why did you chose the name 'Embassy' ?


 James: Well, what happened was, Alasdair was on holiday watching the news and there was an Embassy somewhere being attacked, and then Ali just heard the word 'Embassy' and came back from his holiday with a tan and told us the name Embassy and we quite liked it! 

Aidan: Each of us had a different name we were pushing for, I wanted 'Cute Poison' as the band name just because I thought it was good, but now it is a song name. It was the
'Silver Romeo's' at one point. We had to flip
a coin between 'Embassy' and 'The Embassy'.


What bands and artists influence you? 

Aidan: Individually we all have our own inspirations *points to James* (The) Beatles man, *points to Ian* Oasis man. I'm the obscure guy, I'm really into The Black Keys, Band of Skulls and I really like The Pretty Reckless and I might get slagged for that but I think they are a really good band.

James: I think if you listen to the tunes we wrote a year ago compared to now you can hear how it's changed. Like I used to listen to the Beatles all the time and you can hear the from what input I've had. Now I listen to The Black Keys and Band of Skulls and its kind of good to hear how it's changed with new bands, it's not as 60's sounding!  It's kind of cool to see how it's changed since we wrote the last one. 

Aidan: With 'Words' I was listening to The Raconteurs a lot. 'Cute Poison' I was listening to Lana Del Rey a lot and with 'Pretty Little Liar' was mostly The Pretty Reckless. 


Are there any smaller or less well known bands that you admire? 

Aidan: Different bands around Falkirk are really good, last Saturday we played with Electric Alice and I will definitely big them up! One of the best gigs I've ever seen, and last Saturday Wallace (Pate) was just an amazing front man.


Why did you decide to start a band?

James: Well I was kind of the one who brought everyone together because I have been playing guitar for a while and I wanted to play along with people rather than just on my own and it's just...it's fun!



Is it mostly just a hobby or will you strive for success? 

James: It's kind of half and half just now. We are looking to push to get to a good level where we can make a bit more money, with the demo we are looking to sell it to companies. Venues like King Tut's would never take on anyone who doesn't have recordings and I don't think 20 Rocks even takes people without recordings, so it is really just taking it to that nice level where there is real money to be made.

Aidan: We understand that it takes a while to get to that stage of being crazy successful, but what with Facebook now it can make things a lot easier and could cut the process down by a couple of years easily.

James: It's just a matter of sticking on with it, cos Primal Scream were almost completely unknown for I think about twelve or thirteen years and they were just playing gigs sort of at this level and then found success all of a sudden. 


Part 2 of the interview coming soon!

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