Interview with Young Guns band
Recently I had the chance to email the British band Young Guns with some questions about their new album, Ones and Zeroes, which was released June 9, 2015. Here is what they had to say about the album and the future of Young Guns.
-You just released your third album, Ones and Zeros. Is three going to be your lucky number?
“There are a lot of things that you can’t control when you’re in a band, as far as your trajectory is concerned. I suppose luck does play a large part in it. Have you released the right record? At the right time? Are people in the right place to connect with the music you’ve written? I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, but we wrote an album full of music that we are proud of and so have done the only thing we can ever do. I hope people like it. It feels like they do. I’m very happy to have the album out and that people are singing the words that I wrote back to me.”
Your tour dates are keeping you busy for the next two months. On a scale of one to LET’S DO THIS how hyped are you?
“We’ve been so desperate to get back out on stage again, and although we’re now coming up to our fourth month of touring this year we’re still hyped every night to play. It feels vital right now and I feel like we’re playing better than we ever have before.”
Ones and Zeros hasn’t even been out a week, and the fan response on Twitter is immense. How does this make you feel?
“There’s a real satisfaction and validation in someone responding positively to the new album – in any way, be it online or in a crowd. It’s great. I think after the length of time we’ve been away, certainly in the UK, fans of our band are glad to have new music.”
Tell us a little bit about yourselves. What makes Young Guns Young Guns?
“We’re just five good friends that try to write songs that we would listen to if we weren’t in the band. I’ve always considered that a pretty good measuring tool. We are very driven and fundamentally just love what we are lucky enough to be able to do. Just like every other person in a band I imagine. One thing I will say though is that we’ve never belonged to a particular scene and have never been part of a clique or group of bands. I don’t think we sound like anyone else either. It has always made it hard to find bands that we fit with, tour-wise, but I believe that we stand alone in that regard and I’m proud of that. In the long run I think it is a positive.”
If each of you had to pick a favorite track from Ones and Zeros, which would it be?
“A few of us would say lullaby as we’re all fond of that one. I like some of the lyrics I wrote for that song in particular. I quite like die on time as well because I quite enjoy taking my voice there. It’s a lot easier! “
You have a track with a Latin title (Memento Mori) and a track called Speaking in Tongues; do you have a particular affinity for other languages, or is it coincidence?
“That’s interesting. I really enjoy seeing little patterns or threads connecting things after they’ve been written or recorded. Sometimes it’s subconscious, sometimes coincidence. This album though, while not a concept album or anything like that, has a running theme of connectedness and how we communicate as human beings (or don’t) so it’s probably something to do with that.”
How long did it take you to write Ones and Zeros?
“The songs only took a few months to error but it was spread out over an 18 month period in between tours, a few weeks off here and there, demoing in between tours etc.”
What’s in the future for Young Guns?
“We’ll tour as hard as we can to promote this new album, and get back to a lot of places we haven’t been in some time, and hopefully lots of places we’ve not been at all yet. More tours of Europe and the United States at the very least. Also, we’ve already started writing our new album (very tentatively) so I’d like to have that out in 18 months or so. Basically we want to just be as busy as physically possible!”