CHEBS

Photo Credit: Campus Bands.

How did you all get together? A few us were in halls together, and everyone else we kind of just accumulated through mutual friends.

Soey, you’re a new recruit. How did you get a space in the band? They needed a singer and I had always been really desperate to get involved with CHEBS, so when the opportunity arose I just pounced at it!

How many gigs had you done before Battle of the Bands? We’ve played quite a few. We’ve done two society balls, a few Firehouse gigs, some charity events up at the Lemmy, and we entered last year’s Battle Of The Bands, but flopped in the first round.

So how you found the competition this time around? We’ve been scared by the quality of the other bands! The votes for both the heat and the semi final were incredibly close, and it gave us a bit of a boot up the arse to work harder in practice and sound really tight since the competition was so good.

Did you think you’d make it to the final? To be honest we hadn’t really considered it, we wanted to enter and knew the format of the competition but we just took each set as it came. I think not focussing too much on reaching the final took a bit of pressure off us.

Have you got anything special planned? You’ll have to wait and see!

How mysterious. Do you perform your own music, and if so what’s the songwriting process? We’ve got a few originals. Usually we try and just get down the basic groove and structure, then add all the fun stuff (trumpet, lyrics, guitar parts etc) in practice when we’ve got the band together.  Everyone in the band has different styles of music they like so it’s nice to have those influences coming out from each CHEB when we’re writing our own stuff.

What artists inspire your sound? Nile Rodgers, Dave Weckl, Winston Marsalis, Stevie Wonder, Bootsy Collins, Tom Benson, Davey T…

Just a few then. Are there any new or up and coming artists that are influencing your sound that you think people should know about? Pickle Squad are quite a fresh and interesting band, they’re not very big yet but we think they’ve just got a really different sound and should break out into stardom soon.

I’ve seen you a cracking version of Kendrick Lamar’s I; how do you choose which songs to play? We all listen to a lot of music, so whenever we come across something we think could work with CHEBS we just pipe up in the group chat and see if anyone bites.  We look for stuff people can dance to and won’t get bored of. Any songs that can fit together are great as well as we bloody love a mash-up.

I have to ask about the name: why CHEBS? We were pushed for name in last year’s Battle Of The Bands, so Dan’s thought process was “Fuck it, we’ll go with CHEBS”. Very little discussion was involved, and we’ve never looked back.

Are people now booking you for gigs after seeing you live? It’s happened a few times which is always exciting, and getting bookings helps us to build up the CHEBS name.

What’s next for CHEBS after this? We’re hoping to get some tracks recorded and have an album out by summer, and we’re also gonna bulk order some CHEBS branded condoms, because we believe in planned parenthood. The world has too many people, and that concerns CHEBS. Here in CHEBS we want to do our bit to help reduce population growth, for the good of Mother Earth. Stay safe and get your CHEBS out!