His Lordship at The Hope & Ruin, Brighton, 15th November 2023
Ahead of their show at Brighton’s Hope & Ruin on Wednesday, we caught up with James Walbourne and Kris Sonne to find out more about how His Lordship came to be, their pending debut album and life on the road. Anyone who’s had the pleasure of catching them live will know that the impressive list of artists they’ve played with so far (The Pretenders, The Pogues and Willie Nelson to name a few) take a side seat when it comes to this band; His Lordship are a new incarnation that are a force to be reckoned with on their own terms, raw rock’n’roll with a contemporary twist or two, and a frenzied energy that’s impossible to ignore. Oh, and they can really play too…
How has the tour been so far?
James: This tour’s been great – it’s relatively short, it’s been seven days, we’ve been up to Glasgow and up and down the country
Kris: Glasgow, Manchester, Bristol, Nottingham, Leeds, it’s been amazing because I think it’s only our third tour and people are coming out for it, when you start out you have to convince people, you’re selling yourself and for the first time we had this great experience of people kind of knowing us a little bit and people liking it
J: It’s a reaction
K: We’re a band now
You’ve both played in other bands and done different types of music, so what’s brought you to do what you’re doing with His Lordship?
J: At first it was a lack of gigs coming in, we were sort of bored and just started a rock’n’roll band up, I personally was really bored, I didn’t have any touring or anything, in a bit of a lull and then just wanted to play some music so we got together a rock’n’roll band just to play covers up in a local pub in North London called The Boogaloo, and we played every Sunday and we just did it for fun
K: Six Sundays in a row
J: And more and more people started turning up and one night we’d have Paul Cook and Glenn Matlock, Chrissie Hynde, everyone turned up on this one day, it was quite something
K: There was real excitement in the pub with all these people there
Is that quite daunting playing to that crowd?
K: No, I think it’s not about us being good, the reason we started was honestly to have fun, just a fun rock band, all these rock bands now are quite serious and taking themselves a little bit seriously and we were the complete opposite, it’s also why we dressed in suits – anti rock’n’roll really, all the gestures, the posing, we just do it for fun
J: We started doing covers but then we got bored of doing covers because we are just those sort of people who like to write songs anyway so that got boring fast, so we just started writing and it morphed into this, we still do the odd cover because we like it
It feels like with some bands they’re a bit too cool for school, like they never fully let go
K: Too cool for school, and in this genre, you’re categorised and put in brackets with other rock’n’roll bands but we don’t think we’re anything like that, we just like the spirit of it
J: They’re going to be really upset when we do our avant garden jazz record… it’s just to entertain ourselves
That comes through
K: Hopefully
J: Otherwise you’re fucked, I’ve done it before in bands, I think we all have, you start overthinking things
K: You start second guessing what you really feel
J: Like, oh we need a song for the radio, and then you start going down a really bad path
There’s a lot of that now, a lot of bands just going for the number 1 album, trying to get people to buy 20 copies of their album just so they can get it, it feels a bit disingenuous
J: Calculated
K: It’s the same with social media, you can’t say to anybody on social media ‘that’s bullshit, ‘that’s insincere’, you can say all kinds of things like ‘I’m really grateful’, they’re not really though so it’s almost like just trying to stay away from the cliches
How much does social media impact, it can be a kind of necessary evil?
J: We talked about this before we made the band, it’s a whole different ball game now, you’ve got to do social media and people of a certain vintage don’t like doing it, including us, you know you don’t want to be on your phone all day, that’s not what it’s about – and people are, so we thought how do we do it, so we thought long and hard about it, and that’s when we thought we’ll wear suits, we’ll play loud rock n roll for 20 minutes and come up with a kind of an art idea, so it’s like Gilbert and George play rock’n’roll – and that was it and we really had a good time with it
K: We’re not going to speak, we’ll just do this art thing sometimes like Laurel and Hardy or Gilbert and George
J: But now we’ve hit a wall and we realise we have to speak – so watch this space
K: The mystery is what we love with the band, not that we are mysterious as such but like, Elvis has left the building, wow, you know, he’s not there signing and speaking to everyone, he’s in a helicopter
J: Where did he go?!
When you go back to when you were a kid, when did you first start connecting with music, where did you hear it?
J: For me it was my dad and he would take me to go and see music from when I was 5 years old, Chuck Berry, Frank Sinatra, so many people
K: We went through the shows you’d seen at the Town & Country Club – where we play the day after tomorrow, it’s The Garage now…
J: We had a big list and it just went on and on, we went to maybe 3 shows a week when I was very young, I was very fortunate – and his record collection, it’s all my dad
K: Mine too really, I remember in school he was in a band so I would go to his rehearsals, I remember once I fell asleep by the bass drum while his band were doing their own songs
J: I think it’s just about being surrounded by music when you’re young, and we were obviously very lucky in that regard
K: It was just like this universe that opened, wow
Your album is being released soon, who else apart from you has made that happen?
J: Our manager’s been really great in helping us get it together – all the recording of it, we started it during lockdown and we just cobbled together studio time but we’ve had great help from a guy called Tchad Blake who’s a mixer, a great mixer, one of the world’s great mixers
K: He’s done Los Lobos, many many big artists, he’s an American who lives in Wales now
J: He’s done lots of things, he helped us initially get started with mixes of our song All Cranked Up and a couple of other ones, and then subsequently David Wrench who’s another great mixer who we know helped us out, we’ve had help along the way, we owe those guys
K: We basically out of Covid started booking some shows, we always saw ourselves as a live band first, and then we had songs that we played live before anyone heard them, then we were like they’re ready to record now and these guys just made them sound great, so we just found ourselves
J: I mean we grew up in public really, we didn’t just come out with these songs, if you look on YouTube you can see draft versions of them, we just went and played them
I guess also people would know you are so they might be looking to see what you were doing
J: Maybe, you know it’s a funny thing because the other band we play in, there’s no real crossover, this is it’s own thing, we’ve noticed that
K: It really doesn’t rub off
J: It doesn’t rub off, no-one comes from those other shows
K: A few musicians and stuff but it doesn’t rub off in terms of ticket sales
J: It’s an interesting thing
It must be a nice thing because there must be a big risk that people would have expectations, maybe it’s because you’re doing something so different
J: Maybe, it’s just a funny thing that of the people who come along there’s no crossover, not that we’ve seen, this is it’s own organism and people come to see it, it’s great, it’s not the same thing at all
K: Another thing we stayed away from was, especially in the beginning, mentioning The Pretenders at all because we want this to be a fresh thing, we didn’t want it to be – you know when people are like ‘oh this is like a super-band’, no, it’s just a band
You’ve obviously played in some really big venues, what’s it like playing in the smaller ones now?
J: Love it, it suits the sort of music and it’s what I grew up going to
K: It can be much looser and still come across, I mean you can’t jam in a big place, it just doesn’t come across but here you can take it everywhere and people will be so close watching it’ll be much more of a closer connection
I’m a big fan of the smaller venue
J: And there’s not many left in London now with rooms of this size so there’s nowhere for kids to play, so we’ve been going up and down the country playing these places which is great, we want to keep them going
Apart from your own have you had a chance to go to other gigs to see anyone else lately?
J: Not this year, we’ve been touring since our first rehearsal on January 3rd and we’ve not really stopped
K: Well we did see Guns n’ Roses…
J: Many times we’ve seen Guns n’ Roses, we supported them – but not really, we’ve not had any chance, I’ve missed a bunch
K: We went to a couple of gigs in New York
J: We did, we went to the Village Vanguard
K: And watched Bill Frisell
J: That was good, it’s been mostly jazz, I went to see Kurt Elling the other day at the Union Chapel, that was great, he’a a jazz vocalist so weirdly… it’s quite odd actually isn’t it?
K: It’s almost like a cleansing of the palette
J: Yeah it’s a great thing to go and see, on the road we saw a bit of the Foo Fighters, we played a gig with them, can’t think of anything else though, we’ve been on the road for a long while
Any other newer bands that you like that you’d recommend?
J: I tell you who I love, they’re not really new any more but a band called Lankum, an Irish band, they’re probably my favourite band now and I think their album’s the best album of the year, it’s like Irish folk but it’s done with extreme noise, it’s beautiful, it’s like taking The Pogues into the 21st century, it’s mind-blowing actually, they’re on Rough Trade, they’re really great
So it’s Brighton for tonight’s gig – do you know Brighton well?
J: Yes
K: I don’t, well I’ve been here maybe ten times and I know the different venues, Concorde, The Prince Albert, The Dome, we played at The Old Market
J: I used to come down here in my 20s and go dancing
K: You almost moved here
J: I did almost move here, for about a second I was considering moving into my friend’s house…
K: And someone said don’t move to Brighton
J: And that was the end of it, that was one of The Pogues said that, so there you go
So you’re staying in North London, is it North London forever?
J: For me yeah I can’t see myself going anywhere, I love it too much, I was born and raised there… never say never, I could move… maybe down the road!
K Well I moved back to Copenhagen in 2018 so I’m definitely not going to move for a while now
So what’s next, you’ve got the album, you’re finishing your tour, have you got plans for next year or is it time for a break?
J: Oh god no, we’re just getting going; the album’s out January 26th on PIAS Records and we’ll be doing some instores around then, and then we’ll have another tour of the UK then we’ve got a bunch of American dates in July – we’re just planning the whole year so there’ll be a lot more to come from His Lordship
Their set at The Hope lives up to the hype. The pair are joined by Dave Page on bass and have the crowd on board straight away. Shapes are thrown, mics are swung, the drum kit doubles as a launch pad, and a masterclass in ferocious musicality is offered. There’s a call out to wish Shane McGowan well, and an almost relentless set of concise and cogent songs that hit the target with ease, recent singles Buzzkill and Jackie Works for the NHS going down a storm. Whatever comes next, we’re looking forward to it – you can catch His Lordship tonight at The Garage, Highbury and keep an eye out for that album release.
His Lordship
Photos and interview © Siobhan 16 Beasley St Photography
Published 17th November 2023
Breaking Glass Magazine 