The Echo Heights
Ok, guys, I guess having read your biography on the site, the most obvious first question is ‘what have you got against Earl Hickey?’...only joking, lets start with the name – where or why Echo Heights?
The name came about as an amalgamation of several ideas. We went through about 200+ names in the pub, most of which were comedy names dreamt up by our former bass player Andy, and believe it or not this is the only one we all liked. My brother recently met The Charlatans front man Tim Burgess and told him the band name and he gave it the thumbs up. If It’s good enough for Burgess…
Does the pub feature a lot when the band makes important decisions?
We have had a few “meetings” to go through stuff in the pub yea.
Normally we try and stay on track sorting out gigs etc but then it normally descends into “when they were building it, do you reckon there were carpet fitters on the death star?
You mentioned Tim Burgess of The Charlatans fame and I assume you are a fan of theirs but who else has had an influence on The Echo Heights and who do you guys have on your generic mp3 player’s playlist at the moment?
The Charlatans are a band that we all like, but despite them sounding quite similar I wouldn’t say they have had a major influence on us. Mark is a big fan believe it or not of Madonna and Kylie as well bands like Teenage Fanclub. Steve has everything on his ipod from Pantera to The Sugar Babes to Rage against the machine. Nancy has been listening to a band we heard of whilst in Texas called “The Crash”. My ipod has mostly rock stuff on there, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Helmet etc. My current fave though has to be Ben Kweller, the guys a genius!! A lot of the stuff we all listen to doesn’t actually sound anything like our band, but I think that’s a good thing.
Ok, that’s taken care of the music but how conscious are you of image? Do you work on your live image and your media image? How do you feel about successful artists that are all about image with not much content?
We realise in this day and age that image is something we have to think about, like it or not. It’s a part of the band I’m hopeful people will see improve as we go along, we are getting there. We know there is defiantly a need to look the part on stage and in shoots, it’s a necessary evil I guess. It does wind us up though when you see a band that look like they have been styled to within an inch of their lives but are severely lacking in the tunes dept yet people rave about them! You think, if these guys didn’t look “cool” nobody would give a monkeys about them.
Yea, we all know what you mean! So what about the future? How far can Echo Heights go and what have you got lined up to get you there?
Well, the album comes out on Sept 8th (shameless plug!) and we are in the process of lining up plenty of gigs to promote the album. It’s likely that most of these will be around London and there is talk of doing one in Brighton soon. We are playing the Bull and Gate in Camden on the 24th of August and the Tunbridge Wells Forum on the 28th, so we should be nicely up speed come the launch date.
As for how far we can go, I’d like to think the band can go as far as we want. I won’t be happy till we play The Brixton Academy to be honest! We are very confident in the songs and we believe that ultimately good song writing will always prevail.
Well, we wish you all the best with your gigs (especially after the shameless plug), sounds like you are going to be busy. There’s a question we like to ask the bands we speak to which is not music related but usually gets some interesting answers so here goes...
If you had to liken each member of the band to an animal what would they be and why?
Well, Nancy recently reckoned I would be a Mere cat if I was an animal, not sure why but I’m quite happy with that!
On the 4 legged theme I reckon Steve would be a house cat perched of a fence sunning himself having a kip, he’s quite a laid back guy. Mark would have to be the wise silver fox and as for Nance.. She would probably be a Dolphin, she does a great flipper impression!!
Maybe you could get Nancy to upload her dolphin impression and get some feedback from the GigaHitz fans on how life like it is!
Final question is a simple one word answer game and we want it
to be rapid fire, so the first thing that comes into your head about each of these people
(and try and keep it clean!)
I will put it to her!
Amy Winehouse - attention seeker
Noel Gallagher - old school
Madonna – embarrassing mum
Lily Allen - cute
Mick Jagger - old
Pete Doherty - lost
Boy George – 80s
and finally The Crazy Frog! - Dire.
