INTERVIEW: Reverend And The Makers

Reverend and The Makers are one of the most overlooked bands this millennium has seen. In spite of this, they are also one of the treasured bands about, building up a huge loyal fan base on the back of their raucous live shows. Ahead of the release of their fifth studio album ‘Mirrors’, James Cummins catches up with front man Jon McClure

Hi Jon, let’s begin with you – How’re you doing?

I’m alright mate, I’m just sat in my back garden in my dressing gown. So yeah all good, how are you?

I’m good thanks! Congratulations on the new album, how are you feeling as the release approaches?

I’m feeling really good, feeling confident. Even if it doesn’t necessarily pick up a number one or whatever those people who listen to it will realise it’s definitely one of, if not the best album we’ve done and it’s hard to convey that to people over social media because then it just sounds like you’re trying to promote your own shit, which I guess I am a bit. But even if I didn’t say a word about the new album and just released it people would know that we’ve managed to make something special. I just want people to be able to hear it now, and we’ve made a film to accompany the album and I just want people to be able to see that as well so we’ve been doing these special private screenings for the fans and they can see how different it is to everything else.

I’ve had the privilege of giving the album a listen in full, and like you’ve said yourself it is completely different to any previous material.

Herein lies the problem you see ‘cause like I have a reputation of writing a certain type of music or whatever and people don’t want change or they don’t want anyone to fuck with the programme, the problem I have is how do I get people to just listen to it? Say if we was signed to SonyRecords and had something daft like a million pound budget or if we could find a way to ‘do a U2’ or some shit and stick it on people’s phones so they have to listen to it. If people listen to it I’m fairly confident they’ll love it.

It seems as though you’ve sat down and just had fun with it. What do you think led to the album taking shape the way it did?

You know what it is, you end up sat there thinking you should write a song a certain way to get on the radio and even if you sat there and deliberately said to yourself “let’s make a song less radio-ey”, it stills end up creeping into the back of your mind, and I think you could hear that a bit in the fourth album, I think the third got us back into the game a bit, especially after the gap between the second and third albums so I think we tried to do the same thing with number four, which we shouldn’t of done. So with this album I sat down and thought I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want.

Me and Ed (Cosens) both thought let’s do what we want. The album only took us just over a month to record, which I think is down to the freedom we had with it. Also this album is a proper band effort, like there’ll be tracks where I just play guitar and say Joe (Carnall Jr.) or Laura (McClure) will sing. The response has been amazing really with the likes of BBC Radio 2 and Radio 6 playing it and Zane Lowe behind it, so long may it continue.

The album’s been gathering a lot of praise already, and amongst those people are Noel Gallagher and Carl Barat, how does it feel to be receiving kind words from those guys?

It’s amazing. You know equally as much as they are my mates or whatever to say that at the end of the day those guys have wrote some of the biggest songs of this generation. For people like that to come out and say that they love what we’re doing is such a fucking buzz. The Libertines were on Radio 1 a few weeks back where they were doing like a thing where bands would choose some songs to be played and they chose I think The Beatles, Velvet Underground and then us and y’know that’s fucking surreal.

It’s weird because over all this time we’ve gathered a sort of cult reputation – I don’t know the only other band I can think to compare it to is the Courteeners. Like we’ve been ignored by the mainstream media for so long that we’ve actually done well, it’s almost like we’ve done better whilst we’ve been ignored. I’m not saying we’re as big as them by any means but we haven’t been in the mainstream media in something like seven years but considering that we’ve actually done really well. Liam writes good songs and I like to think I write good songs, it all comes back to the songs in the end.

You’ve already provided fans with three tracks from the upcoming album, but what’s your favourite?

There’s a track on there called ‘The Gun’ which has got a brass-band on it, it’s like a circus or something, I love it. I love the first song on the album too called ‘Amsterdam’. There’s also a track called ‘El Cabrera’ which me and Ed actually wrote around fifteen years ago when his mum and dad had gone out and we were just dicking about on guitars.

There’s a funny story that I need to tell you about when we were filming for the film in Jamaica. The guy we were filming with told us how all the films over there were like really serious so we needed to do something that was a bit more comedy – so we decided to dress up as Mexicans stood on the beach with towels over our heads and moustaches drawn on with pen and that. Then we decided we needed guns so we had these twigs for guns, so we’re stood in the middle of this town in Jamaica looking like dickheads. Next thing this bloke comes over and asks us if we wanted real guns, so obviously he took the clips and whatever out and we start filming with these guns. Next minute the guys screaming over telling us to hide them, so I’m shouting to Ed to hide his gun, turns out the car behind us had police in it. Bearing in mind Ed’s a lovely lad who’s never really been in any trouble, I just had images of me and Ed locked up in Jamaica for illegal gun crime. When we got back I was panicking him saying things like “did you wipe your prints off that gun?”. He’s been shitting himself ever since we got back.

It’s clear that you love to engage with your fans that perhaps many other bands don’t, with the house gigs last year and now the private films screenings for fans – how does it feel to be interacting with your fans like that?

It’s great man. Like we’ve already done a screening where a guys come out with a tattoo of my writing on his arm and other people saying that it was the best thing ever, and that’s what it’s all about. I’m at home with people like me, I’m at home in some boozer in Selby. I’m going to Blackburn tonight and to me that’s where the glory resides places like Blackburn and Selby, not fucking L.A.

It’s all about creating memories for people that will last forever, at the end of the day it’s those memories and the music that will go on forever and I think that’s powerful, it’s beautiful – to me that’s worth than a million pound or a number one or whatever. We went from playing in front of thousands at the V Festivals to playing in a pub two days later and it is what it is. It’s all still music.

Obviously with the new album comes a tour, are you excited to get back out on the road again?

Definitely, that’s where we do our thing. People can say what they like about our records but no one can fuck with us live.

It’s almost been eleven years from the beginning of Reverend and the Makers, what’s been your favourite moment of the journey so far?

I’d have to say the other day bringing my little lad on stage with me. Now my hobbies become my life, but yeah the other day I had my lad onstage with thousands of people going nuts, that’s definitely my favourite moment so far.

James Cummins.

@CummyBear

‘Mirrors’ is released on October 9th, and you can catch Reverend and The Makers live on their full U.K tour commencing on November 13.