Taking Brit Rock Back For The Working Classes

You know the story – guys form band, guys practice hard, guys start to get gigs, begin to build a reputation around the local traps, guys aspire to bigger things. Repeat, and repeat, and repeat.

It’s a familiar story within music, bands struggling and striving, trying to get ‘heard’ by someone with the power to elevate them from the trenches, help them make all the hard work worthwhile. The successes are rare but people still do it. Many wear it like a badge of honour, seeing it as paying their dues, no doubt scornful of The Voice, Idol etc. Ask Ryan ‘Van’ McCann. His guys, Catfish & The Bottlemen, did it for years, part of that same story. They’d not have it any other way. “I guess the feeling of being somebody, that’s what kept us going,” muses McCann, who despite being born and spending the first few years of his life in Australia, hails from northern Wales. “All we wanted to do was make ourselves proud, and our mums and dads proud, and live a life that was worth writing a song about. When I was a kid, I’d go to gigs with my cousin… and they were the best times of our lives, you know what I mean? All I ever wanted to do was, imagine if someone could come away from a night playing my songs, walk away with their girlfriend or best mate… and say, that was the best night of their life. It’s just about being able to get into people’s souls.”
 

“I guess the feeling of being somebody, that’s what kept us going”

Catfish formed back in 2007, in the Welsh seaside town of Llandudno, and for years were a part of the aforementioned story. Years of under-age gigging, building a name but ultimately, going nowhere until, eventually, being signed some 18 months ago, beginning an all too rare new chapter – that of having the opportunity to get into as many people’s souls as possible, either in a live setting, or via debut LP, The Balcony, released in September this year. “It was the Reading and Leeds festivals, it was that festival,” McCann pinpoints what he sees as the turning point. “People were talking about us, but… everyone was partying, but when we came on, the tent filled up, about 6000 people, and people outside and I thought it must be a fluke but then people started ravin’ and singing our songs. We never got given anything, we never got support slots or on magazines… There’s a theory going around the UK, bands like Oasis and Stone Roses and Arctic Monkeys, they were all working-class bands, and because the industry supposedly has no money now, a working-class band can’t make it – you have to be rich kids. So [that festival] was the moment we thought, ‘You wanna bet?’”

Catfish & The Bottlemen have now risen from the trenches. They’re a working-class band who worked hard and now it’s paying off. Touring over here as support for The Kooks is testament to that, but no matter how high they rise, these guys have their feet firmly on terra firma.