Shambolics in 2023 by Liam Maxwell
Shambolics’ whole album is a reflection of everything that’s been happening with us and everything we’re seeing.
Much has been reported recently about the disparity in the music industry; with a grassroots venue seemingly shutting down every week, the hope for smaller bands to make an impression gets smaller, with other avenues for exposure (such as touring Europe) also being closed off.
The industry itself is buoyant, but mainly at stadium and arena level – artists down the food chain are being left to feed off scraps and fend for themselves.
However, for some bands such a way of living is second nature. The following interview with Darren Forbes – vocalist, guitarist and songwriter for Shambolics – took place during the gruelling days before a (virtually) DIY album release, Dreams, Schemes & Young Teams, which is unleashed on the world this week.
As he explains, to follow the dream from the ground up in 2024 requires much more than just writing songs and letting the rest take care of itself. Depressingly, real-life worries have to be considered.
Hey Darren, how’s it going?
I’m doing this interview in the car! It’s been crazy recently: we’ve been filming all week in Glasgow and Edinburgh doing promotion, and then we’re down in Manchester, then away to Coventry to do an album signing thing, back up to Manchester to do a video, away to Middlesbrough to a record plant to watch our records getting pressed, then back up to Glasgow late as hell last night, practicing until 2/3 in the morning, then I was just in Fife now back to Glasgow. It’s been crazy, but all good! I’m enjoying it, it’s worth it.
I kind of feel that we’re a little bit burnt out because we’re putting all the effort into it. We haven’t got a big label, it’s just us and our small team behind us. We’re putting 100% into this, all the while trying to live our normal working-class life as well. It’s been absolutely hectic but I think when the album comes out and people are enjoying it, that’s when it will feel like the hard work has paid off.
Do you all have full-time jobs?
Well, I’m kind of a dole-dodger! I’m the one who does all this stuff; my full-time job is Shambolics, but it’s a full-time job I don’t get paid for. I’m just the poor guy that’s always skint and makes no money. The rest of the lads have got full-time jobs but jobs that all work around the band. It’s quite good.
How did the band come together?
The band has been a changing line-ups between me and Lewis. Me and Lewis are the songwriters and singers, we met when we were 16. Young team down the park, drinking bottles of wine and whatever, you know how it goes when you’re 16! Lewis had always played music and I’d just started, and we just hit it off. We had the same music taste. It wasn’t until we were in our 20s that we started doing the Shams, we just jammed together and hung out.
Since then we’ve had an ever-changing line-up of musicians, but it’s always good as long as we keep cracking on and enjoying it. That’s the most important thing.
So what’s the current line-up of the band?
The current line-up has been in place for 2 days! We’ve had a lot of people coming and going recently! We’re just doing the main promotion for this album as me and Lewis. The guys that recorded the album – Jake, Ben and Paul – we were good mates and we put in a lot of hard work recording the album, but even they weren’t original members of the Shams, they just came along later on as well. They obviously were important members who spent a long time with us and recorded the debut album, but the main thing that people can’t commit to is the commitment! This (interviews) sort of stuff, doing it every day. We’ve been filming music videos for 5 days, and we’ve been down in Coventry and stuff…people just can’t commit to it when they’ve got full-time jobs. Jake just had a kid.
We’re still the best of pals with all of them, it’s just a commitment thing. It’s crunch time now, we really have to put all our eggs in this basket and go for it. Some of them have got £50k a year jobs, it’s too much of a risk for them to take. Whereas Lewis works in a guitar shop on minimum wage, I’m on the dole…we’ve got nothing to lose. We’ve been doing this for 8 years and it’s our thing. We’re the risk takers!
That seems to fit with the themes of the album…
The lyrics on the album, tracks like Losing Your Mind, go over that and about the state of the world. Universal Credit is pretty much a story about us being on the dole and getting kicked off it. The whole album’s a reflection of everything that’s been happening with us and everything we’re seeing. We’ve just been talking about for the whole process of the album.
How long did it take to record the album?
We did it in quick succession. It only took us two weeks to record, but it was about January last year. It’s been sitting there for a while. It’s funny, I’m doing interviews like this and it’s everybody’s first listen of the album. I’m fucking sick of it now, I can’t wait until it’s out! I’m excited for the world to finally hear it!
Sitting on for it a year, do you think the album reflects where the band is now?
I do feel like we’ve moved on, but not too much. I don’t feel our sound has changed that much but I do look back on it…I’m a nightmare to work with, to be honest. During the production I sit in with our producer Chris, who’s really good with me, he lets me sit and mix it with him. I’m really bad for trying to change stuff. I always listen to things and think, ‘Fuck, we should have done this or that’. I’m bad for criticising everything, but I am really proud of it. Some of it I’ve gone off, but overall, very proud.’
You seem to have put everything into the album, is that fair?
There’s 12 tracks on it, and we actually recorded about 10 – ‘Let’s just leave it at 10’, sort of thing – but then there’s tracks that have been released just before we signed to Scruff Of The Neck that never really got the credit they deserved. We were self-releasing; we didn’t know what we were doing. We just chucked it on Spotify and that was it, we didn’t give any promotion at all, but the tunes have done really well live. There were 3 songs – If You Want It, Losing Your Mind and Dreams, Schemes & Young Teams – they were recorded and never had a good push so we went back into the sessions and remixed them, re-recorded the odd bit here and there. We thought it was worth them getting the recognition they deserve by being on the album.
What was the inspiration for the songs?
Well, on Universal Credit I was angry that I was getting kicked off the dole. During this recording process I was on the dole and going into the dole office and they were just saying, ‘You’ve been on this for too long, you need to go onto this course, build a CV, come in 5 days a week…’. I was like, ‘Mate, I’ve just signed a record deal and we’ve recorded our debut album. We’re nearly there, please just keep me on it’. They ended up kicking me off, so during the recording process I just went home and wrote it. I was angry about the situation, and a lot of the album is quite natural because that’s the way life was at that moment in time.
Kyle Falconer from The View contributes to the album. How was it working with him?
It was great. We’re from near enough the same area as Kyle; he’s from Dundee, we’re from Fife which is just down the road. When we were growing up, The View were the kings of Scotland. They were a big band up here. I know they were a big band everywhere at one point, but they were really big in Scotland. We idolised them; they spoke the way we spoke, in their own accents. It was refreshing to see someone just like us on stage killing it. We were huge fan boys.
The first time I met Kyle was at T In The Park; he was wandering around the campsite wrecked. We ended up sitting and drinking with him until 5 in the morning. This was way before I was even in the band. Fast forward a few years and we played gigs with him and I reminded him, and we just became good mates with him. It’s been a real journey and I’m good pals with Kyle. We hang out a lot whenever he’s in Glasgow, but the fan boy is still inside me!
Shambolics received a lot of attention recently for the album trailer, which was a parody of Trainspotting. How did that come about?
The label just kept on going on about being Scottish and playing on the Scottish thing. They’re from Manchester and they were like, ‘We really want to play on that and pick up in Scotland’, and we were like, ‘whatever’…They kept going on about Trainspotting, every video was like, ‘We’ll get a Trainspotting poster or wear a Trainspotting T-shirt’. I was like, ‘Mate, drop it! It came out in ’96 and I was born in ’94!’. I never even seen the first Trainspotting until the second one came out! But eventually, just to keep him happy, I said, ‘Why don’t we just rip off the intro’, because the intro is iconic.
Fife is near Edinburgh – although I live in Glasgow now – and a couple of the video guys live in Fife, and I’ve got a couple of mates in Edinburgh. The guys in suits chasing us is our first manager, he’s a journalist in Edinburgh and is one of my best mates. It was just a laugh; go the places where scenes were filmed, get our mates involved…I honestly didn’t think it would go down that well, we were just doing it as a laugh. People love it, and I’m really happy how it’s turned out. It was really unexpected.
What’s next after the album release?
We’ve got the UK debut headline tour which went on sale and the Scottish gigs have sold out in a couple of hours, so that went really well. We’re trying not to do too much. I think less is more, like the Stone Roses. They did a gig in the early days and it was a big deal (even though I wasn’t born, I’ve just read that!). We’re trying to do less but when we do something, it’s a big occasion and everybody wants to come. The full focus is just selling out this headline tour and see where it goes from there.
Shambolics’ debut album Dreams, Schemes & Young Teams is out tomorrow, February 16th.