At the outset, Freaks Union look every inch your typical punk band, from the copious amounts of piercings and the obligatory tattoos, to the standard punk dress code. And from the way they stumbled into the club, spilling beer and swapping jokes I wasn’t holding out much hope for a particularly in depth or serious interview…
‘Wow, this is like the Crystal Maze, this place!’ exclaims Stew as Hull/Leeds-based punks Freaks Union follow me into Esquires Level 1, ‘do you remember that?’ (Putting on a mock-serious voice) ‘This is a physical game, you have three minutes and it’s an automatic lock in…’
But look past the stereotypes that their appearance might conjure up, and get them on a subject that’s important to them, and The Freaks Union tell a different story; a story of hard work, passion, perseverance and the close bond with the punk scene as a whole that has kept them going strong for the last ten years.
‘We started originally in ’96,’ explains Stew, ‘but we didn’t release anything ‘till ’99, so we just bummed around a bit – it was only me and Jimbo. Then we released an album on 12 inch and then the next one was about 2000; Lee, Jamie [Dean] and a guy called Greg joined and we did the second album.’
‘Greg was the best thing that ever happened to us, by the way’ explains Dean, followed by an explosion of laughter from the rest of the band.
‘Was that a sarcastic comment, Dean?’ I enquire
‘Yeah, yeah totally. Totally sarcastic!’ Jimbo laughs, as Stew composes himself and continues to describe the band’s evolution to their current line-up, ‘that was the line-up we had the longest and we wrote another album… but that was the main core of it, when Greg, Dean and Lee joined; we kinda started touring more and stuff. And more recently,’ he says somewhat proudly and with a smile, ‘“The Wolf” joined us. We found him howling at the moon…’ [all laugh]
‘So why ‘The Wolf’? Or shouldn’t I ask?’ I probe tentatively, But Jimbo seems happy to reveal all, ‘the first tour he did with us we had to give him a name…’, as Stew jumps in, ‘I called him “The Wolf”; I just looked at him one day and went, “sod it, The Wolf”. He didn’t get a choice in it - that was it! At first he didn’t like it, and then he started introducing himself as it! It depends who he’s talking to…’ [laughs]
But aside from the image and the intriguing names, what are The Freaks Union about? Where do they see themselves in today’s ever-increasing music scene and how would they describe themselves? It’s a question they don’t take lightly. ‘Well,’ begins Stew, ‘punk’s got about thirty genres!’
Jimbo: It’s difficult… we’re so hard to identify, and now that bands have got so many different labels we’ve found it can go against you… because people can’t put a tag on you they don’t know whether to go and see your shows…
Stew: But I think it’s best not to label yourself… though at the end of the day we are pretty much a hardcore, melodic punk band.
Dean: Yeah, but what influences us is not necessarily punk.
Stew: It depends what mood you’re in as well really. [Our influences have] changed more recently. I suppose, as the years go by it’s probably got more diverse. Personally, I used to listen to a lot more punk than I do now… I don’t know, we just all listen to a lot of stuff and it all comes out in the music; we just influence each other really, don’t we? We just play how we play. We don’t think about bands or genres. Whatever feels right.
Jimbo: We’ve sort of learnt over the years what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s good for us and what’s not. We spend more time having fun, that’s what it’s about.
Stew: Yeah so long as we enjoy playing. We don’t feel like we have to stick to one style.
And that’s what seems to be the most important and perhaps impressive facet to The Freaks Union: their passion for music, having fun and the intense camaraderie that they share as a band and as part of the punk scene in general. While Jimbo and Stew do most of the talking, all of the band constantly chip in, excitedly talking over each other, suddenly animated by ideas and things that matter to them.
‘[The punk scene] has had a low patch,’ acknowledges Jimbo, ‘but there are a lot of good bands that are up and coming; like tonight, A New Day’s Enemy and The Smoking Hearts are both very good bands, but at the moment the scene seems to have gone a lot more hardcore and less punk. We’ve seen a lot of styles come through over the years, but we’ve just stuck to our own style, and just watched everything else happen really.’
The band’s slight front man, Jimbo is perhaps the most outspoken member of the band, and, with his shocks of green hair, drainpipe black jeans, white sneakers, braces and an impressive amount of tattoos and piercings, is perhaps the most intimidating to look at. Yet once again, in spite of appearances he is relatively softly spoken, and focuses you with an intense and intelligent stare when he tries to explain his point of view.
‘The punk scene is the kind of scene where people do make an effort and look after each other - that’ll never die. You know people will always be there and there’ll always be gigs and they’ll always help you out – you’ll always have a bed for the night and you’ll always have food. And that’s probably one of the most important things about punk; as well as the politics, people are there to help you out. There’s a lot of passion there with people as well… you know, people just being nice,’ he says emphatically, ‘I haven’t really met any bad people in the scene in all these years.’
Jimbo highlights another important issue for a punk band, that of politics - is this another punk tradition that The Freaks Union want to support and does it crop up in their music?
‘It did at one point…’ Dean begins.
‘Yeah,’ echoes Stew, ‘it comes into Jimbo’s lyrics at certain points but it is more personal. As a band we don’t really worry about it. We’re not gonna stand up at gigs and be real preachy. It’s more personal to the vocals. And if people ask then we’ll chat about it, but we try not to too much, ‘cause music’s about fun.’
‘I won’t preach about it,’ Jimbo explains, ‘if I’ve got a political point I’ll mention it, but I never really say anything on stage about it because people don’t want to know – it’s boring! People wanna see a band having fun and having a laugh and if your lyrics are saying something…’ he searches for the right word, ‘something special then they’ll take that in when they read your lyrics, you know? And that’s what I’ve always liked to work from as a writer; I think you shouldn’t get too personal and on your high horse about stuff, just write your own shit and then let people make their own judgment.’
The new album, ‘Songs From Despair’, is the band’s first release with help from the well-known Deck Cheese record label, ‘yeah,’ explains Stew, ‘we just released that last album with them, and that’s it, we’re not with the label. And once again, the band offer a powerful insight into the dilemmas posed by the music industry.
Jimbo: We just think it’s a good stepping stone really, those guys were there at the right time; they gave us the right deal at the right time. We needed to step forward, and basically they’ve got us the point that we need to be now, but for the band to continue we need to look forward again, because… there’s all the issues with punk rock selling out and not selling out, but we know that as a band that we can’t afford to be in a band unless we get some finance behind us. [That] has always been a problem with punk rock, you know, you always get slagged off for earning money, when that’s what makes the world go round, unfortunately.
Stew: The thing is, people look up to all these big punk bands and they’re making millions, and they don’t question that; we make like, twenty quid more than we should and buy us all a beer, and we’re called sell-outs! [putting on a whining voice] “what you, mean you’re making money back?” [laughs]
Jimbo: We always have the attitude that being in a band is like a free holiday; wherever you go around the world, even if you break even and don’t make that profit, the fact is you had a free holiday and get to be in a band – that’s really important…
At this point, the other members have lapsed into joking and talking amongst themselves, but Jimbo continues seriously, ‘…a lot of bands forget that. We don’t get into that bubble of, “we’re only in a band ‘cause we want to be famous” - fame don’t really exist.’
Stew: And [those bands] don’t last five minutes because it’s too much hard work, they don’t stick around. We’re not like that, obviously, because we’re still here!
Jimbo: It’s important to stay down to earth and that’s one thing we’ve always done.
Stew: Yeah, or we wouldn’t still be playing shit-hole venues after ten years, do you know what I mean? Or we would have given up years ago.
Jimbo: For the love of it, the passion.
Dean: Yeah, when we start playing together, that’s when you know you’re doing something right.
In that sense then, playing live must be an important aspect to Freaks Union’s existence?
Dean: Very!
Jimbo: That is the element to us, ‘cause we’re a loud band and that’s what we do. We’re the kinda band that even in rehearsal we all go mental ‘cause we all bounce off each other, that’s the best thing about the band and we were really lucky to get Wolfy in [patting The Wolf’s leg in an almost fatherly way] because we fit just perfectly together. We’ve still got a really tight band because all of us are enjoying it. That’s why we like to go out, we like to drink, we like to party hard – sometimes we party a bit too hard, but we’re good friends and it’s great to go out together.
Stew: Yeah, whether it’s two people or two thousand people we’ll do the same thing and we’ll have the same fun. It’s about each other, we don’t get look out on stage and think, “oh, there’s no one here,” and then just go all miserable, we’re have great fun whatever, ‘cause it’s all about the band, so we just look at each other and have a laugh, it doesn’t matter if there’s no one watching, know what I mean? We play for ourselves; we just mess around and dress up…
Jimbo: Remember that gig in Liverpool? There were fourteen people in the Academy; we all came out in pink knickers, just ‘cause we wanted to have a laugh. We figure, we’re on tour, you could be going to a factory job the next day, but it’s a Wednesday night in Liverpool, and yeah, you’re playing to fourteen people in a in a five-hundred capacity venue, but its better than being in a factory! It’s miles better than that, it puts a smile on your face!
Dean: We always say to people, “come and see us live” just, you know, to people we work with, who aren’t really into our type of music, like friends that are into R’n’B or something, and they like it!
Stew: Yeah, and they’ll say, “I wouldn’t listen to it at home but I loved watching the gig,” because they can see that the energy and the passion is there, people can see that it’s genuine; it’s not us you know, coz a lot of bands jump around and it looks false.
Jimbo: cliché Kerrang! moves. [smiles]
Stew: But yeah, we just do what we do and everyone sucks that up. If we could play in the middle of the floor, we would.
Dean: And sometimes we do! We did that when Jimbo’s voice went once, we just said, “right, fuck it, you sit out and we’ll just let everybody come up on stage and sing” - and everybody did.
Jimbo: Yeah, that was at Lincoln last time we played there, it was brilliant.
So how does Esquires rate in comparison with some of the other venues The Freaks Union have played?
‘It’s in the league of the good venues,’ Jimbo nods.
Stew: And Paul is definitely one of the best promoters, just like, even seeing him tonight, anything you want, it’s sorted.
Jimbo: It’s hospitality that makes you want to play a gig.
Stew: And not many people realise how important that is - for a promoter to actually care, because that can make our night (it probably has) just for him being nice and supplying that stuff has us on a massive high.
Jimbo: And that’s also what a lot of people don’t realise with touring band. You don’t get given much money and a lot of promoters don’t even think that you might want a hot meal, or even soft drinks; a lot of them will say, “well here’s a crate of beer,” but some of you might actually want soft drinks. And you don’t want to sound like you’re up yourself all the time but it’s really important when you’ve been in a van all day to get those simple things – it’s just simple things you’re asking for.
So what’s next?
‘It’s a weird thing to say,’ begins Jimbo tentatively, but with his usual intensity, ‘but I mean a lot of it does rely on what happens next to us; I mean, we are in a situation where we need someone to be there for us and back us up so we can continue, ‘cause we are all getting older, we all gave up careers to do this and I had to move back home, stuff like that, most of us did, and you know, two years down the line of making that big commitment and we’re still sort of waiting; we’ve all got a lot of stuff we want to be doing as well in life so it’s like, we can all do our thing, but we’ll always know the bands there; if we’re all in England for two weeks at the same time there’s no reason why we can’t go out for two weeks and do a tour, cause there’s no reason why I wouldn’t want to be in a band with any of these four cause I fucking love playing with them.’
So for old fans and new fans you might have picked up this evening, what should people expect from the new album, and what is the significance of its title?
Jimbo: We’ve had mixed views from the album; I’ve heard form people who say that it was a bit too much of a change or too much of a big American sound and that they were put off by it because I wrote the last two albums a bit more in the league of like, normal punk, but then we’ve gained a lot of fans as well, people who’ve liked the change in sound, so we want to step forward; I mean I think personally that punk has got stale a long time ago, and needs to be brought forward anyway and I think with the new album that’s what we’re trying to push with, trying to bring a new modern sound in. That’s what we wanted to do, we’re very, very happy with it.
Stew: We wanted something that sounded like… well someone said to me, you know, it sounds too… good, too produced, too over-produced. And I was like, I can appreciate that but it’s exactly what we wanted.
Jimbo: And the thing is with Deck Cheese is that they did give us the freedom to choice a producer, and we could have our friends do all the artwork, so we’ve helped our friends out as well and pulled people together.
Stew: But then that’s not saying that the next album will be the same, or even better produced, we never know what we’re gonna do, we just see at the time.
Jimbo: We’ve started to write again at the moment. ‘Songs From Despair’ is meant to be a positive.
Stew: Yeah, it’s not negative.
Jimbo: It’s not a negative title, as some people seem to think it is, it’s just like, things can’t get any worse in the world, so let’s make things better. That’s basically the message. We didn’t want to have the typical punk cover.
Stew: Yeah, like the speakers on the front cover, basically trying to represent this kind of coming out of a disused area in the background and the speakers kind of pumping out the sound and inside similarly, with the rose and the barbed wire, and that’s basically something beautiful coming out of struggle. But that’s it; it’s a positive thing, not like, ‘Songs From Despair’ so we’re singing about shit! It’s what comes from it.
A positive message from a band with a firm grasp on reality and their feet firmly on the ground.
‘Songs From Despair’ is available now on Deck Cheese Records. For more information about the band, see www.myspace.com/thefreaksunion and their website, www.freaksunion.com