As you know I love when I get the chance to sit down with new bands and I jumped at the chance when I was invited to speak with Jamie and Ben from new band T-10 in West London at their rehearsal space!
Can you tell me how you guys first met?
J – I was doing solo stuff just under my own name, I’ve been in bands my entire life and I just wanted to find a new band to make so I went on Facebook and there are loads of groups where it says oh I play drums, I play bass, I play guitar and we met on there from me putting a post-up saying I am looking to make a band which is a pop rock sort of thing so everything from Busted to McFly to 5SOS that whole sort of pop/rock fusion
B – Yes, I was the same in bands my entire life and I saw the post and I was looking to do something similar and we both had songs that we both written and brought them to the table with new ideas and started writing together
J – The crazy thing is and we were talking about this earlier the first day we ever met which was in 2015, we had never met each other before hand we had gone to a room just like this and straight away just started working writing new songs, we literally wrote a song the same day and that’s the song that is going to be coming up on the EP that we are doing in a few months, so it’s crazy how we have been working so hard to develop things to get things to where we are now it’s crazy how it’s gone full circle and we are really excited.
How did you come up with the name T-10?
B – *laughs* We’re a little bit nerdy you know, we’re into space and stuff and we were watching one of those programmes where they have the rocket launchers and they said “T minus ten seconds” and we were sitting there thinking that’s cool and my dad said I think that’s a cool name and we said we would go with that.
J – And we sat on that for a long time trying to work out if we loved it or not, Ben was always quite keen
B – Jamie was quite difficult to convince
J – We took a break away from thinking about names for a while why we worked on songs and images and then we brought the names back to the table and T-10 was the one that stood out so that’s why we rocketed ahead with it
Who inspired you musically?
J – Growing up for me it was James Bourne from Busted! He is one of my favourite songwriters ever and of course I love Tom and Danny from McFly too! When I got a bit older I found Green Day which steered me away from the pop side a little bit but it was still commercial pop-punk I guess and if you ever see me play live, a lot of things I do is similar to Billy Joel Armstrong! I’ve seen them play many times live and I think that just hooked me straight away and that sort of style of playing throwing every ounce of energy in your body into what you are doing on stage is the best way to do it
B – My dad was in rock bands so I grew up on classic rock music listening to ACDC, Guns and Roses and then I transitioned into progressive stuff just playing a bit of everything, developing my drumming and then my cousin gave me free tickets to go and see McFly and I was like “shit these guys can really play” and I just really got into that and that’s when I decided that’s the kind of band that I want to be in and here we are
Can you tell me about your new single ‘Run’?
J – So Run is out and it’s a song which is about modern life whether it’s through work or other means, there’s loads of stress that are coming at you and a lot of the time stress can take its toll on a relationship so it’s about turning around and trying to say to the world “Fuck all of you, we are going to make this work”. We worked on ‘Run’ with a talented friend of ours called Ban Cavanagh, he is a songwriter so being able to vibe with someone who understood the concept of the lyrics and gave it the pop hook and it turned out the best possible way and we were really happy with it!
B – We went down to Brighton to record it and finished it off there, it was a really good place to be in as it has a really good vibe
J – We would do a whole day in the studio there and then in the evening we would walk down to the beach, sometimes with our guitars, you know the ultra- cheese type of thing and we would just sit there watching the horizon which sounds so ridiculous but I’ve never been to Brighton before so I was in a brand-new place and I’m going to soak up all the atmosphere and everything that exists in this musical city. A few of my friends say it sounds like All Time Low which I dig as they are great.
What is your songwriting process like?
B – Every song is different, usually, it would be that one of us has an original idea, which we have written usually on the guitar, and we would voice memo it on our iPhones. We live together now but before we lived an hour away from each other so we would come up with ideas, humming along while playing and sending it across my voice memos and it was like it’s really cool or it could go here or there and when we got together we would work on it or we would thrash it out.
J – If Ben was to send me a track that he had started working on, I’m not a pro at it but I can use logic and stuff to make music so I would come up with drum parts, or what could we do with the song here, so by the time Ben came over, it wouldn’t be anywhere near finished but we would have the sort of skeleton of the songs as I have a lot of the software and then we would work on it together.
One band, that you would like to tour with?
J – Green Day
B – McFly
Describe each other in three words?
J – Oh gosh this could be damaging, ambitious, driven and delightful
B – Oh god this is hard, confident, talented and driven as well
J – you can’t use the same word
B – Oh ok, focused! god that’s really lame isn’t it
What’s the best advice that you have been given?
J – Keep working hard, when you think you’re working your hardest, work harder, I was chatting with James Bourne and that was one of the biggest things that ever stuck with me
B – I used to live with some mates and we would all get involved in everything and we all use to say “no fucking about, just get on with it”
What are your plans as T-10 for 2018?
J – Big Plans, we’re going to have an EP to start off with so that’s going to be fun, we are working on some music videos, which is great as in my nearly ten years of doing music I’ve never made a music video!
B – I’ve made one but I will show it to you later
J – And then we are going to start gigging and stuff like that and building up a following, one day we will be doing the O2 and Maddison Square Garden and of course not in 2018 but I would like to play the Jingle Bell Ball this year, then the O2 and Madison Square Garden.
B – I think what’s important for us is to get some high-profile support slots that would be really cool.
J – We have done a few before we had the band, I supported Hey Violet and then the Scottish band The LaFontaines, who are badass and I just messaged them and asked if we could support them at their London show so they listened to a few demos and they said “you know what Yes” so we went out to a sold-out show and rocked it up. I think the one thing I have always realised is as much as I love sitting in a rehearsal room, jamming out songs or sitting in the studio recording or writing songs, we are both in our element on stage and I think that comes across during our live performances and we hope that everyone feels the same.
