Interview by: Mark Lacey
When Silveroller completed their first national UK tour in support of DeWolff in March, having sold out all copies of their debut EP ‘At Dawn’, many were predicting a bright and fruitful future for the band – whose sound is founded on the classic influences of seventies British rock icons Free, and Bad Company. However, elation turned to shock when three of the five band members departed unexpectedly in the summer, just a few weeks before a debut appearance at the Just Push Play festival, and a scheduled UK headline tour. Both sides have kept a dignified silence around the reasons behind the split, choosing instead to look forward. The speed of Silveroller’s reinvention shows a band able to weather any storm.
MyGlobalMind.com caught up with founding members Jonnie (vocals), and Joe (drums), and new members Joey (guitar), Dylan (bass), and Lucas (keys).
MGM: Jonnie, the last time I saw you guys was when you were touring around with DeWolff, earlier this year. How do you reflect back on that? It must feel like a lifetime ago.
Joe: Yeah, it was wild. That was such a good time. Luckily, the boys from DeWolff are so incredibly lovely and accommodating and just kind. It was just a blessing to be around them. But yeah, it does feel like a long time ago now.
MGM: Obviously, a lot has happened, hasn’t it? You guys were on a bit of a roll at that point with your biggest run of UK dates. Your album had come out, and you’d already had to repress it because it had sold out so early on. You were getting really good reviews in the press, really good reviews of the shows, and then it all changed. What happened and what was the catalyst for that change?
Jonnie: We were writing for a new record, the five of us that everybody knew, and we were struggling a little bit to get a couple of people into a room for one reason or another. Out of the blue, Aaron said to me that he couldn’t commit to the business side of the band anymore, which confused me a little bit. But by his reckoning, we needed to make X amount of money for it to be a liveable thing. I thought he might just be having a bit of a moment of freak out or something. Because for me, we’d made such a big leap, and we went from being a band that no one had really heard of, to a band that was in Classic Rock magazine. To the public eye, it seemed to happen relatively quickly. And then just as quickly as that had happened, he said it wasn’t for him anymore. He couldn’t commit to the business side. The band now, via merch sales, is pretty much financially self-sufficient. And for an originals project, that still blows my mind. We’ve only got one record. We’ve only done a tour and a half, really. And through merch sales, we’re self-sufficient. I’m not really sure what was expected, but there we are. I gave it 24-48 hours for me to get me head around it, and for Joe to get his head around it, and thinking that Aaron would probably go, you know what, I’ve thought about it. But no, he was done! Within that 48-hour gap, Mr Smith (Joey), who is a long-time friend of mine, messaged me to say that the boys in his band were not as committed as he’d necessarily liked him to be, and he was possibly at a loose end. So, as the dust was settling, I thought, well, I need a guitar player, and someone I know. It can’t just be someone that’s plucked out the sky because we’re going to have to do the whole intimate thing of bearing our souls to each other. Well, me and Joey had already done that anyway.
Joey: I’m still going through the counselling for that, to be fair.
Jonnie: I don’t think the band’s finances will cover that! We wanted someone who could play; someone who’s nuts enough to get involved, and someone that looks like a member of Silveroller. There was only really one person that I knew who’ll be able to do this. And he wasn’t available, ha ha, so I called Joey.
Joey: The one thing I will say is the Pirelli calendar that we’re going to do is going to be fucking stunning now, isn’t it? We’re covering all bases on the looks now. And I can position a guitar in the right position so you can get a naughty calendar.
MGM: Jonnie, when we spoke a few weeks ago, you mentioned that it wasn’t just Aaron that departed. Your bassist and your Hammond player followed in quick succession. That left you pretty much starting again from scratch. Obviously, you and Joe are the core of the band. But how did you feel about that at the time?
Joe: It felt like the world was imploding around us. It was manic, especially because we went from one weekend, being in a writing session and we had the foundations of six or seven brand new songs, as well as the tracks that didn’t necessarily make the cut for ‘At Dawn’. We had a strong basis for the next record and it felt like that was really good. There were issues, but every band has the same issues. It’s stuff that you can work past. And then all of a sudden, it just wasn’t there anymore. We didn’t have a band to tour with. We didn’t have a band to play the next set of shows with. It was massively disappointing to be left in that a situation. Not necessarily what we expected from any of them. But it brought us together. Not that we didn’t have that a strength in the past, but all of a sudden it was us against the world, literally. We just had to get on with it. It was either that or just let it fade away. So, we decided to not do that.
Jonnie: The crazy thing was, we did do a rehearsal with myself, Joe, Joey, and Jake, and we’d all said, we’ll see you next week. And then Jake didn’t turn up. This is after Ross had gone. Ross had basically said that he wasn’t really interested in building again with another guitar player unless we were to pay him, which is tough. Not to get too into it, but not everybody invested into the business side of the band. It seemed like the people who didn’t necessarily invest in the business then wanted to take out of the business, before the people who had invested had got their money back. I’m trying to be diplomatic. It felt like a bit of a kick in the chops, to be honest. When you’ve put the thing together, you’ve financed the thing, and then it just seemed like, oh, this.
MGM: One of the amazing things about that time, is that you went from one day saying that three members of the band are moving on, and then less than a week later you’d announced that Joey and Dylan were joining. It took a bit more time to find Lucas, but even so, that still that whole transition moved very quickly. You’ve not really had any real drama around it; you’ve just got on with it.
Dylan: Me and Johnny met at a party in London when I was doing work for the ’70s vintage clothing brand, Hippy Shake. He was the only other scouser there, so I went up to him. We exchanged details, and he texted me and was like, the bass playing position’s opened up in Silveroller. Do you want it? I was like, yeah, obviously, yeah. And then we all just hit the ground running, really.
MGM: What’s the background of yourselves, Dylan, Joey, and Lucas, before Silveroller? Have you played with each other before?
Lucas: I lead my own project, but I’ve always mostly been a session player. The last time I was in a band, that was probably 2017. Ever since then, I’ve been a session player. I was in the US for quite a few years before moving to London three years ago. It’s funny because shortly before I joined, I mentioned to friends that I really missed playing the keys. I didn’t want to create a band myself, but I thought if a band called me, I would say I was spot on. And that’s exactly what happened. They were looking for a keyboard player. I was willing to join a band. So, it was a great fit. We’ve got mutual friends in London as well.
Dylan: I’m in Liverpool. I’ve mostly been in smaller bands with people at Uni and stuff like that. I’d been doing music in Uni, so I was planning on finishing that and then sneaking my way into the industry somehow afterwards. But obviously the call came for Silveroller and I just grabbed it with both hands. This is probably one of the bigger things I’ve done, and I like to think I’m taking it in my stride.
MGM: Well, the tour you did supporting DeWolff earlier this year really put you on the map. Your voice, Jonnie, has really resonated with people, and a lot of people are comparing you to Paul Rodgers.
Jonnie: I pay them all off individually.
MGM: What about yourself, Joey? What was your musical background before joining Silveroller?
Joey: I think it’s quite easy to see that I am the old man of the band, let’s be honest. I was in a band called the Dead Medicine Band. It had a retro, psychedelic, prog-y sound. Before that, I was a guitarist, but I was also a singer, although it wasn’t through choice as much as necessity. Obviously, when you’ve got a proper singer like Jonnie, and I hate to give him credit, but he has got a top voice; it’s good for me to just be a guitarist. It’s different from the bands I’ve been in, and tours I’ve been on. The pressure has always been on me because of it being singer and guitarist. While now, because there’s four of the guys in the band who are all great musicians, it makes my life a hell of a lot easier.
MGM: This must be an interesting junction for Silveroller. The easy thing to do would be to just continue on the path that you’ve already embarked on. But does this present an opportunity for you to slightly reinvent yourselves?
Jonnie: We’ve kicked around some newer stuff. Joey sent me a whole bunch of demos and we’re going through them at the moment, cherry-picking bits. I want everyone’s personality to shine. It was never originally like we had to write songs that sound like “this”. It was just, these are the songs that we’re writing. For me, that will continue. I think that was the thing when finding people to come in. I wanted to continue the mission statements of writing rock n roll that we believe in and that is honest. How that comes about is however it comes about. With the demos Joey had sent, there was one that we felt was pretty much ready to go. Let’s go and kick that round. And it just sounded more like us than I think we did. Deep Purple went through however many iterations.
Joey: I think it’s almost inevitable when you go through a transition like this, the music will carry on with that transcendence. I think it’s a progressive thing. You’ve got to understand that there’s new personalities, there’s new ways of looking at stuff. In the end, obviously, the band has got a sound to it. I’m not blowing their trumpets, but you’ve got an incredible drummer in Joe, and you’ve the frontman doing his thing. With those two core elements of it, it’s inevitable that it’s always going to be the Silveroller sound, whether it goes in a slightly different direction with the influences that I have, or the influences that Lucas has or Dylan has. We’re just putting new things into the melting pot. In the end, whether we’ve got that classic rock sound or whatever, we are still a band of 2024. You take new flavours and new spices and create something even better.
MGM: The line-up has now been together a while and you’ve completed your first run of dates together. What has been the biggest positive from those early days playing together?
Jonnie: It’s been backs against the wall. We only cancelled one show that we’d announced, and then there was a couple we were supposed to be on that we just didn’t have time to get together. When the chips are down, everybody’s been there to get in the trenches and fight it out. That was good. And that does spark its own creativity because it’s quite a unique situation. Not many bands are in a position where it’s like, five blokes stood in a room, and now we have to become a band by this date. I think the nicest thing was how quickly some of that stuff started to meld together. There was a bit more time between the first date we played, the Just Push Play festival, and the rest of the tour.
Joey: I think we were lucky because Joe is so meticulous, and I’m saying that in a positive way, we went through everything with a fine-tooth comb. We were in the trenches. We didn’t have a chance to go, do we like it? It was just, bang, we’ve got to go for it, and that brought us together as a band.
MGM: What’s the reaction been from fans and friends?
Jonnie: The initial reaction, I think, was disbelief. People just went, what? Why? But it is what it is, man. And ’At Dawn’, I’m proud of it, but I’m looking forward to the next bit of it now. I was put in a position where I didn’t have a choice, and it’s sink or swim, and we’re swimming, and I’m happy with where the band is. This is an opportunity that I didn’t think we were going to have, and now we’ve got it. There are new creative elements in there. It’s the songs on the record plus more stuff. And it’s naturally going to take on a new life now. And that’s wildly exciting. For instance, Lucas’ high register is absolutely outrageous. And all our harmonies now sound like the Bee Gees, and that’s the best thing in the world, man.
Joey: Ther are some points where only dogs can hear it, it’s incredible.
MGM: The fate of bands is often determined by the personalities of the musicians, and how you react to being trapped together in the confined environment of being on the road. You guys are all from relatively different parts of the UK, and learning about each other for the first time. How has that been?
Dylan: I like to think it’s relatively easy. I don’t hate them yet, so it’s all right.
Lucas: I think if there’s drama, that just means that next album is going to be even better. We need the drama.
Jonnie: I think the fabulous thing is that Lucas still hasn’t got a clue what any of us are saying with all these dialects flying about. Two scousers, a lad from the Northeast and a lad from the Black Country. The only reason he’s joined is because he didn’t know what we were saying.
MGM: Yeah, you’re from Brazil, aren’t you?
Lucas: I’m from São Paulo.
MGM: The next big date for you guys is DeWolffest in Utrecht in December. You created a bind with those guys, and I gather they’ve been very supportive in recent weeks.
Jonnie: Yeah, very much so. Just as stuff was starting feel like it was collapsing around me, Pablo messaged me and said, how’s it going, man? And I was like, have you got 10 minutes. I gave him a call and he was just like, “Go and get it done. It’s too good of a name and a brand to just drop it. The potential of it is too much to let go. So just go and get it together. I’ll see you in Utrecht”, That was my mindset anyway, but it was just nice having somebody on the outside going, get it together.
MGM: You commented earlier about the demos that Joey had brought in, and also some of the songs that didn’t make it onto ‘At Dawn’. What’s going to happen with those? Is there more music on the horizon, do you think?
Joe: I think this situation has set us back a little bit in terms of the timeline for getting new stuff out. But not by a ridiculous amount. New music is definitely on its way. We’re exploring a few options for how soon we get bits out and what comes out next. But we’re writing. At Just Push Play we played a new song that isn’t on the record. So, again, we’ll get more than we need and whittle it down to what we think works, and then that will come out.
Jonnie: The nice thing is, now we’ve got a bit of a break, which we had originally thought was going to be when we’d get in and record the bulk of the new record. The timeline has gone back a little bit, but not a horrific amount. So before playing with DeWolff, there’s a whole bunch of time to write and to create whatever’s next. The idea is to just pick up from where we left off, and continue on the same road, but just in a slightly different lane. But not the middle lane because Joe hates it when people drive in the middle lane.
Silveroller will be performing at DeWolffest in Utrecht, Netherlands on 7th December 2024.
For more information:
https://www.facebook.com/SilverollerBand/?locale=en_GB&_rdr
https://silveroller.bandcamp.com/album/at-dawn
About Author
