For my first interview ever I had the pleasure interviewing Mike and Ash from Boston Manor. Boston Manor is a pop punk band from Blackpool, England, signed to Pure Noise Records. Established in early 2013, the band blend emo, hardcore and pop punk with brutally honest and sincere vocals. The band released their debut EP 'Here/Now' in 2013, followed by a split 7" with Throwing Stuff later in the same year. Their second EP 'Driftwood', was released through Failure By Design records in 2014. After signing to Pure Noise Records, the band released the 'Saudade' EP in November 2015.
In September they released their first full length album Be Nothing. The band has toured with the likes of As It Is, Chunk! No, Captain Chunk!, Forever Came Calling, Moose Blood, Seaway and This Wild Life.
Hi guys welcome to my first interview ever so sorry if I’m screwing this up.
No problem man, we’ll just pretend this is our first time ever being interviewed by someone, so no worries!
So this is the first day of your headline-tour what are you guys expecting from it?
We honestly have no idea, we’ve just been home for 3 days from an American-Candian tour that we did for a month, we’re just really tired so we’ll just see where it goes.When it comes to people showing up, we absolutely have no idea. Europe is always a bit weird for us. We had shows where pre-sales were 2 tickets but sold out on the night itself. It’s very hit and miss. With Europe you just have to keep playing and playing and eventually kids will get into it.
What was your favourite tour until now?
America was amazing. It’s a tour we did with Like Pacific, Broadside and Rarity. It was our first time in the States and it all was so exciting, we got to see stuff we’ve never seen before and hang out with people in all kinds of different places. It was a whole different world over there. Everyone was really nice and it felt like home away from home because there were actually people singing along and knowing the lyrics. It just blew our minds.
Where does your band name come from?
We stole that name from a band called Joyce Manor. We just took the last word and thought… Well that sounds cool. Let’s use that…
No we’re just kidding man.
It was a song on a demo from one of Henry’s friends so we asked if we could use that.
But it has nothing to do with the big manor in Boston. Or the tube station in London.
People just ask us: Hey you’re not from Boston are you? So why are you called Boston Manor? We’ll mate the band Europe aren’t Europe, the band Queen isn’t the Queen as well… Or they could be? Maybe they all are Queens? I bet they are…
What has changed for your guys since the release of your debut album?
A lot of kids are getting more interested in our music because we have more material for people to listen to.
We only had 2 EP’s out and apparently people only knew about one in particular. So yeah the new album is just more music for people to listen to.
Where did you guys get the inspiration for the album/lyrics?
Well Henry (singer) would probably be the best one to ask that, but there’s a few things that run through the album. One of the main one is guilt, another one is like the main feeling of helplessness and it’s very nihilistic the whole be nothing. It’s almost a bit like self-defeating.
The diver on the cover is just diving into nothing, the unknown. It’s kind of what we are doing with the album. Because we have no clue where it’s going to take us. But it already did us good. We just wrote the album for us, we’re just happy that people like it.
What bands inspire you?
We all listen to different kinds of music, it’s hard to just point one out. It’s just a combo of all band members. We do listen to obvious bands when you listen to our music like: Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, Radiohead,… So they kind of influenced the album, maybe even without us really knowing about it. But we’re just really big fans of all kinds music even soundtracks of movies and stuff like that.
Finally, if you could tour with any band, who would you pick and why?
Can it be any band/artist? Even dead ones? Because if so we’d love to tour with Queen or David Bowie. Because it would be weird. And we could hang out with Bowie every night, Like what’s up Dave? Or Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Guns ’n Roses, Nirvana,… Metallica would be hilarious though just to see people’s faces.
Plans after this tour?
We’re off until after Christmas so after that we’re doing the support for Four Year Strong. And maybe some festivals but we can’t really say much about that.
What do guys still want to achieve as a band?
Well we’ve already achieved what we wanted. Seeing the album in shops like HMV, we toured America and now a headline tour, so everything from here is just a really big bonus. But we’re quite ambitious.
You’ve only been a band for 3 years now and you guys already did big support shows with Moose Blood, Seaway and This Wild Life. So that’s pretty big?
Well it’s pretty sick. The first year of 3 we just booked DIY-shows and -tours and if it didn’t pick up after a while we would have just kept doing it for fun but luckily we got on some really cool tours. It started off with Moose Blood really because we made friends with them. They are just really nice guys who just dig our music I guess. In the beginning when they asked to go on tour with them we were just like little fanboys. Like Oh my God?! Is this for real? It was a great step-up for us.
Well I asked everything I wanted to ask you guys.
You sure? Anything weird you want to ask us? You can ask us anything? OK then, what do you guys do in the van?
We just sleep a lot we’re like a bundle of cats, we’re quite boring though. We just love sleeping in vans. But when we aren’t sleeping we play games like one’s called resistance but we’re not allowed to talk about that one. It’s just lying and bullshitting each other and it’s get really loud and rowdy. Also a card-game called shithead. And everyone’s playing chess right now so we do that as well. We don’t drink each other’s piss like other bands do. Like we said, we’re quite boring really. Half of the bands we toured with eat each other’s faces in the van.
So you guys are from Blackpool right? I heard that it's like the Last Vegas in England?
Yeah it’s more like the Reno in England. It’s shit, it had it’s time. It was once a great place and the occasional person considers it a great place but it’s not a great place. People in Blackpool just drink a lot, use drugs and have babies in their teenage years. But like we said we’re boring so we don’t do that. And there’s literally no music scene over there apart from Robert Smith of The Cure and one member of Jethro Tull. There are absolutely no venues to play. We never do hometown shows, but we consider Manchester our hometown when it comes to music.
Half of this interview is fiction by the way. So you figure what’s real and not. -Ash Wilson-
