Come sapete Anna, la nostra Capo Redattrice, vive in quel di Londra soprattutto per via della sua passione per il mondo Rockabilly.
Ed è proprio in questa città che ha scovato e intervistato una giovane e promettente band della scena: Danny “O” & The Astrotones.

Qua di seguito trovate quindi un interessante Q&A , avvenuto via mail mentre il frontman, Danny, si trovava oltre oceano.

How do you start to play togheter as a band?

It’s just over a year now! Our first ever public performance was on August 10th 2018 and our first ever proper gig was on November 10th 2018.
We formed just after I saw a clip of Curt playing drums at The Rockabilly Rave that went up online. He was the first drummer around my age that I’d seen play in a long time so dropped him a line to see if he’d be up for joining a project I had together. Luckily, he was! After a drink together at his local in Alton, he was up for it and I had the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
Oh, I should probably go back a little bit and give some more context as I’m kinda starting at the end. I’d written loads of songs during my summer off between finishing my law degree at university and starting my masters course in law. I put together a bunch of songs in 2016 and then they got shelved because I didn’t have a band to play them with. I knew I wanted Steve from The Caezars to be on board because we’ve been friends for years but, the drummer and bass player eluded me.
So, a year went by and in 2017 I got Steve to play on some of the demos I’d recorded and things moved a little closer but I still hadn’t found a rhythm section. It had even got to the point where Steve had suggested putting an add out to see if anyone was up for it! I didn’t want to do this, though, because I was worried we might end up with someone who would cause friction.
So, I sat on the songs again until I saw the clip of Curt I was saying about earlier. Once Curt was on board, I messaged Sam as I’d seen him play before in other bands and I had the 4 piece line-up together!
Our first rehearsal was on July 8th and, we went from there basically.
However, things took an unexpected turn when my dad passed away on July 14th 2018. My plan had originally been to just rehearse and rehearse, record in November (which I actually booked the session for while next to my dad’s hospital bed as we were sure he was going to improve) then start gigging when we had a single out in January/February 2019. That was the plan because I wanted to have a product out before we started gigging.
It changed when my dad died because I wanted to put together a tribute to him at his wake. That tribute involved the 2 other bands I’d played in, Thee DB3 and The Caezars, playing. This was because I always covered one of my dad’s songs in the bands I’d played in because he had the ability to play pulled out from under him when he fell off a ladder and became wheelchair bound and unable to use his hands anymore.
I thought it would be cool to get The Astrotones ready for that night and perform another one of his old numbers as a tribute at that would be our debut live performance. The Astrotones played “Machine Gun” by The Rough Diamonds, dad’s second band, Thee DB3 played “Kerbcrawlin’”, by TV21, by dad’s third band and The Caezars played “Heartache Overload”, a track my dad performed and recorded on a solo EP where he played every instrument.
Footage went up from The Astrotones songs (as we played 5 songs in total) and, before I knew it, we’d been booked for a festival in Spain, a really cool London show and the warm-up gig we put on ourselves for the Spanish festival sold out in about a week!
I think that’s a pretty comprehensive run down of the formative year but, I’ve probably missed something out!

As long as you remember did you always have this passion?

Yeah! It all started with the tapes my dad used to play in his car. It was a little red Triumph Herald convertible and I learned so much about music from that tape collection. My favourite song of all of his tapes was “Strychnine” by The Sonics so, I guess I was always destined to like weird stuff!
As far as the passion for playing, I loved it from the moment I first set foot on-stage with The Caezars when I was 17 at The Brighton Rumble. There’s nothing I enjoy doing more than playing live and it really is the reason I’m in a band. Recording sessions are fun and making music videos is really cool but, there’s just nothing like that immediate thrill of getting an audience reaction and feeding off that energy a live show has. I absolutely love it and I hope that I get to do it for many more years yet!

How did you choose the name for your band?

Another pretty long story! I used to use a Telecaster with The Caezars that a budget airline lost on our way back from playing at the High Rockabilly in September 2010. It was just before my 18th birthday and, because I was pretty distraught with losing my guitar, my dad decided to give my birthday present a little early.
He built his own guitar when I was a kid because he had to sell his beloved Gibson to buy a new washing machine just after I was born. He built the guitar in the hope it would have no value to it so he would never have to sell it! He gigged with it for years all over Europe and got it signed by Link Wray on his travels. Then, when he had his accident, it was hung up on the wall and nobody played it. It became an almost Excalibur-like item!
That, was my 18th birthday present and the guitar was called, The Astrotone.
I played with it all over the world and took it to America. I also broke it twice! So, I decided I should probably get my own one built because of the emotional value attached to dad’s guitar.
A really good friend of my Little Carl built a copy of dad’s guitar which we called The Astrotone MKII.
I used both the guitars to record the demos I put together when writing the songs for this band so, the name is quite literal because it is me and The Astrotone guitars!
The “O” monicker came from the fact that my name used to be Danny Owen and my dad realised material as Paul “O” before and I thought that sounded cool and I used the stage name Danny “O” with The Caezars. So, it’s me and my guitars, hence why the band is called Danny “O” & The Astrotones!

If you were going to be prime minister of your country for one day what you were going to do?

Wow! What a question! There’s a whole lot of political mess going on at the moment and I won’t get to into the specifics of how I would sort out our particular present predicaments.
However, what I would do if I was prime minister for a day is legislate to make education about our political and legal systems compulsory at secondary school level. I only found out about how the UK works when I did my law degree and my eyes were really opened. I think that everyone should have that base level education and then people would be more engaged in political debate and want to be more informed.
I think the reasons we don’t is because we’ve never had a huge moment of constitutional change here in the UK. Those countries that have broken free of empirical rule and those that have broken out of dictatorships have done so and so, citizenship lessons in those countries really mean something because they know what it is like to have their countries descend into tyranny. I don’t think we understand that because we’ve just managed to muddle through almost all “modern” history without that clean break.
So, if we made young people learn about the way things were run, it might make them feel like their vote does make a difference. That’s why I’d make a compulsory “citizenship” (or, subject-ship, as may be more appropriate) qualification compulsory for all those leaving school at 16.

As a band which is your biggest dream?

To conquer the world!!! Nah, probably headlining Vegas would be the pinnacle. However, I would absolutely pinch myself if we ever got played on BBC 6 Music! So, I guess my biggest dream would be to get a radio session on the Marx Riley show. I love pretty much everything he plays and he’s turned me on to so much good music. So, know he liked us enough to get us on his show would be incredible and would have to go down as my biggest achievement if that ever happened. It’s pretty unlikely, though…

Free question!!! Tell us what u Want.

I answered this
While I was queuing for the Hagrid Rollercoaster at Universal actually.
Does it count?

Ora siamo più che sicuri di avervi incuriositi e vi invitiamo quindi al concerto che la band terrà il prossimo 21 settembre in quel di Londra.

Dopotutto per la musica vale sempre la pena viaggiare !!!