If you’ve not heard of Tax the Heat then you’re missing out as they have to be one of the most exciting ‘new’ Rock bands in the UK at the moment. we caught up with guitarist/vocalist Alex Veale to find out what has made their second full-length ‘Change Your Position’ so essential…
Mark: Hi, Alex, how are you? Thanks for talking to us; we love the new album, “Change Your Position”. I’ve heard bits and pieces from your first album, but this one’s pretty special, you must be happy with the way it came out?
Alex: Yeah, we’re really chuffed with it, I feel like we hit a bit of a stride, and kind of came in to our own a little bit on this one, in a way that we hadn’t on the first album. We are proud of the first album and it was received really well, but with touring and living together on the road and having to write in a very short space of time, I think all of those things combined made for a really cool album.
Mark: So are you one of those people who thrive under pressure?
Alex: Yeah, definitely, I think I need it actually, I need pressure, I think it makes ideas come to the forefront. If I know I’ve got to get something done, it’ll just start happening, if I don’t have a deadline, then I just procrastinate, I guess! Knowing that we have to get on with it and make it happen, I just push myself really hard, I think we all did really.
Mark: Did you do anything differently this time as far as the process of making the album is concerned? I know you all got together in a room and put it together, was there anything else you did differently?
Alex: I guess the difference between the first and the second is we hadn’t really “gigged” any of the songs at all until we started recording, and had them all written. But because the arrangements were constantly changing, and some of them were not quite finished or had room to develop, and our producer having his take on them as well they didn’t get “gigged”, so that was a pretty big difference. Whereas all of the first album was completely “gigged”, and tested on the road, so we knew we were pitching the best live tracks.
Mark: That relationship you’ve got with Evansson seems to be paying off pretty well, how much of a part of the sound is he?
Alex: He’s huge to it! He is like the cliché extra member of the band! We couldn’t really be doing it the way we are doing it without him; I totally believe he is an unsung genius of production! When you see him work he’s just like a mad professor, and I’ve worked with a load of producers and engineers, and I’ve never worked with somebody like him. I really do hope he gets the recognition that he truly, truly deserves, he’s fantastic!
Mark: Yeah, he’s created a huge sound, and you’ve got a lovely guitar sound on there as well, you must be happy, it really cuts through the songs, and dominates when it needs to.
Alex: Yeah, he is the master of capturing that sort of stuff, there are so many albums at the moment where everything is multi tracked, and there’s loads and loads of guitar parts, and what you’re hearing on that album is only two guitars doing what they’re doing, but they are miked up to make them sound great, he’s taken what we do and enhanced it and captured it in the right way, he’s great!
Mark: I read in your press release that as well as your contemporary influences, David Bowie and Prince are mentioned. Do you think they would’ve come in to the mix as much if we hadn’t sadly lost them recently?
Alex: In a way, I don’t think they would’ve done, they have had a massive influence on us as a band, and individually as well, but their music has been listened to a lot over the years, and I think it’s more to do with when somebody dies when someone passes away, you reflect on it in a bigger way, you really are honed in and it heightens your focus on those people, because you’re suddenly aware of them in a bigger way. I think that is the biggest thing that came in to it; you go back and think why were they this way? Why were they so big? It really did have a big influence on what we were doing.
Mark: Yeah, we were lucky enough to see Prince here in Australia, a few weeks before he died, so we got one of the last glimpses of him. Did you ever get to see him or Bowie live?
Alex: Yeah, I saw Prince at the London O2 when he had his stint there, it was great, he is like the ultimate party man, his sound was just so good and so slick, he was really on the money and he played loads of guitar that night, which was great. I didn’t get to see David Bowie, I would’ve loved to have seen him, that would’ve been a dream, but I think he really started winding down in the early 2000’s, I think it was health related, and so I never got to see him.
Mark: You are a band that are well known for your live show, and I read in the press that you really see yourselves as a live band, and I think the new album has got that live feel to it as well, it does sound like four guys in a room making a record! Was that something you consciously looked for?
Alex: Yeah, massively, and I think all the best rock albums are made that way, and that is what rock music is, like a human thing, it should be to do with how the band are playing and how they do it live, it shouldn’t be reliant on trickery and short cuts in the studio, it should, when you hear a band you should be able to pick out every part of that band. You should be able to focus on each part of it, and hear the performance and the energy just in that room because when you’re tracking as a band, and you get that take, you’re so in that moment, and you’re playing as hard and as well as you possibly can, that you won’t capture that, you can get away with having lack lustre takes if you’re doing multiple tracks and guitars or over dubs or whatever!
Mark: As well as Bowie and Prince, what other bands inspire you or have inspired you over the years?
Alex: At the moment, with newer bands coming up, there’s not a lot really! I think that’s the reason we’re doing what we’re doing, and I think with this album we’ve made the album that we want to hear because I don’t think my tastes have been catered for. I think the last new band that really, really got me excited was White Denim; I loved those last two albums of theirs, and there’s a band called 10.13 that I really like, they use technology as an instrument and not as a shortcut, they’re quite creative with it, but it’s still got the essence of a band. The bands that got me in to it to start with, were like Aerosmith, AC/DC, those classic guitar bands! That got me on the path to listening to all sorts of rock, and other genres as well, I’m a huge music fan but I’m most passionate about guitars.
Mark: Do you see yourself primarily as a guitarist, rather than a vocalist?
Alex: Yeah, I’m a guitarist that sings! I only ended up singing because I couldn’t find anybody when I was a kid who would sing in my band! I was desperate to form a band; I couldn’t find anybody who wanted to be in a band at that point, it was very frustrating, but I found a guy who could’ve played drums and made him the drummer and a bassist who knew how to hold down a root note, and I couldn’t find a singer and was just left with it. My first few attempts at singing were horrendous!! I could not sing at all, but I stuck at it and got a bit better, but I would always consider myself a guitarist first.
Mark: Well you don’t do too badly; you have a great sound on this album! What’s next for you? Tell us about the tours you have coming up. When are you going to be hitting the road and where?
Alex: We’re doing a full UK tour promoting the album, which we’re really getting excited about, getting out and playing new songs, and that’ll be the end of April. We have a couple of April shows in Bristol, which is at the start of April, and then we’re just hoping to get on to festivals and just taking it as far and wide as we can if we can get some support stuff and just build it up and try and get back in to Europe and keep the ball rolling and get the music out there. That’s the overall plan.
Mark: Take it all the way back for us if you can, I love asking this question because the answers are always so varied, when was the moment that you knew you were going to be a musician?
Alex: I think for me, it was my first guitar lesson, I had great guitar teacher and I was so excited about music at that point. I hadn’t played an instrument before, and my dad was hugely in to music and it was always around, but I think it was my eighth or ninth birthday he took me to see Wayne’s World 2, and there’s a point where Aerosmith come on stage and I had never seen a band before, and I thought wow, I want to do that, and I want to learn an instrument. So, I kept pestering my dad, and my neighbour had started having guitar lessons, and that made me want to learn even more, I had a couple of lessons and I was hooked. It felt like it was the first thing, even at that young age, I was OK at everything, I was alright at school, I wasn’t excelling but I was always alright, but to me the guitar was the first thing that felt like it was mine, and I was really good at it, and I just knew then that was what I wanted to do, and I was going to try and get on that path.
Mark: That’s fantastic. One of my favourite things about the album, is there are such a variety of songs on there, from the real “stomp” of “Money in the Bank” which is a great song, and I love the Glam Rock influence on “My Headspace”.
Alex: Cool! Yeah, a lot of people have picked up on that, that there are a few different things going on, which is good.
Mark: What came first, which song?
Alex: I’d taken about seven ideas to the band, and they’d just kind of fell a bit flat, there was nothing exciting in there that was exciting the rest of the guys, but looking back in hindsight, I think that was purely because we’d come from having a finished album and touring it, and listening to it, and you’d forgotten how to write a song from nothing. I was a bit down about it really, but it was when I came up with the riff for “All That Medicine”, once we’d jammed around that, that was kind of the lynch pin of the whole thing, the groove of it, everyone got excited and kept doing stuff. I just said I know you weren’t feeling those original songs, but just humour me and demo them up anyway, and if they’re rubbish and the producer says they’re naff, then I’ll forget it, but they all ended up on the album!
Mark: That’s great, and I guess you’ve blown away that typical stereotypical difficult second album, did it feel like that at the time? Was it a stressful time following up the debut album?
Alex: It had its moments! I don’t think it ever felt like an unachievable, scary task though. We got to the point where it was just a snapshot of where we were at that point in time, if it’s rubbish, its rubbish, if it’s great it’s great! There’s nothing you can do, you’re only as good as what happens, you can’t force it, and once you realise that you just let it happen and I think ultimately it makes for better material. We wouldn’t have gone in to the studio if we thought it wasn’t going to work, so in that regard it wasn’t a difficult second album to make. I think the difficulty now for us is how do we take it even further? How do we take it to the next step? That’s why you could argue that it’s a difficult second album, it’s nothing to do with the material, it’s how can you be a guitar band in this day and age, how can you make something of yourselves?
Mark: At least you’re in the right continent for that! Rock is more alive and kicking in Europe at the moment, and long may it stay that way!
Alex: Yes, it is in Europe, I don’t think it is in the UK, and that’s what we’re hoping, if we can build out of Europe that would be great.
Mark: I think there are a few guitar bands that are big in the UK, like Black Stone Cherry, I know they’re from across the pond, but they can still fill out the stadiums.
Alex: Yeah, they do very well, but at the same time, we’re a bit of a different band to them, it’s just a different thing, they are heavier and a bit more simplistic in some ways, but yeah, they do very well.
Mark: Ok, just a couple more generic questions, we ask everyone. If you could have been a fly on the wall for the creation of any album, at any point in time, to see how the magic happened, what would it be for you?
Alex: Probably “Revolver” by The Beatles, I think that would be, regardless of any opinion of the album, I love that album, I think it would be fascinating to see because you take it for granted now, but what they did with such limited technology to make those sounds is just insane! To reverse the guitar sound now is a click of a button and it’s done, but to actually line it up on tape, layer it and reverse it, I think it would just be mind boggling!
Mark: That’s a pretty good answer, and finally, an easy one, what is the meaning of life?
Alex: The meaning of life is love, 100 percent, love.
Mark: Fantastic! Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to The Rockpit, Alex, take care mate.
Alex: Thank you, cheers, man.
