 Sometimes finding the right bunch people to be in a band with is a never ending task. This was not the case with The Boxer Rebellion, according to drummer Piers Hewitt. American front man Nathan Nicholson and guitarist Todd Howe, who is from Australia, were already working as a duo when they decided that would like a couple of people to join their rock group. They advertised at The London Music School, which Piers and bassist Adam Harrison answered, and that was that. [i]“It was all a bit too easy to be honest”[/i] says Piers. [i]“There was none of this endless auditioning or whatever”.[/i]
But all this was nearly four years ago. It wouldn’t be until 2003 that things really started to get exciting. The Boxers won the Playlouder competition to play at the legendary Glastonbury festival, and beat a band by the name of Keane to do so. [i]“It was like nothing we’d ever done at the time. In retrospect, at the time it was probably the best gig I’d ever done”[/i] recalls Piers. [i]“It gave us experience more than anything because played a lot of gigs, but just only in London and we’d never played a gig of that size together. I remember seeing our bassist at that gig and I think it pretty much confirmed in him that we can put ourselves up for bigger shows and things like that, so it was quite a challenge for us really."[/i]
Shortly after they were Alan McGee whose previous signings include the likes of The Libertines and Oasis. According to Piers, [i]“He said ‘half your tunes were pretty good and the other half you need to work on.”[/i] It was on his advice that the band reworked their debut album, Exits, binning of pretty much most of what they had recorded at the Jacobs studio in Surrey. [i]“It’s actually a better record now than what we had at the end of last summer, after those sessions down in Surrey”[/i] says Piers. [i]“We only included about three or four of those tracks, so it was a bit of a wasted time really. But we needed to do that to learn how to craft the album properly”.[/i]
So with an album already on the way, what are Piers’ ambitions for the band? [i]“It’s a bit like a football manager asking what he expects of his side before a game, and it’s a bit like ‘well, I want to win’. I want to sell loads of records and primarily I want to be able to do this as a job for as a long as possible. Just to be given an opportunity to sell a few records rather than just having the shot at one.” [/i]
[i]'Exits'[/i] is out on 2nd May
[b]Words by: Helen Duong[/b]
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