The Shady Elaines (Interview)

Whether you’re after a band reminiscent of those student summer nights or need a pick me up from those golden days when The Libertines and Arctic Monkeys were in their prime, The Shady Elaines can deliver.

This band should have the label “Indie friendly”, a finely tuned voice surfaces from plucky guitars and a bouncing drum beat. Undoubtedly this band is fiercely catchy.
The band consists of Neil Parry the leading vocals, Ryan Jones guitar, Chris Allen the bass and Ben Fitz the drums.

In a rented room just outside Warrington is where these lads work their magic and like all good musicians they believe in working hard and playing hard. Being together approximately six months The Shady Elaines have performed in different venues across the country and have been asked back by every single one.

When it comes to musical influences, The Shady Elaines has been inspired by the cream of the crop in each musical generation. Neil : ‘It’s a bit of a mixture actually, we get it from The Smiths, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.’ He adds, ‘It has a bit of fifties rock ‘n’ roll, as well as the sixties, which is more motown stuff.’

The Shady Elaines are not picky with genre preference as the music itself is constantly redefined by each band member. Ryan: ‘By the time I write a sixties pop song everyone else has placed their own spin on it.’ Chris feels this collective contribution is the best method to make a band sound truly unique. ‘It’s probably the best way to do it though. We put our own take on it as opposed to what everyone else wants.’

This approach has allowed flexibility, and the room to experiment with their musical tastes. Ryan: ‘We have quite a varied set now, and that’s deliberate on all of our parts, we don’t want to be like this is our genre, we play at this tempo and that is all we’re going to play. This is the stuff we enjoy playing and that’s what we want to get across.

I don’t want to name any names, or slag off any local bands but most of the time when you’re watching a band it’s pretty much the same song, dragged out for thirty minutes, and I think that bands often get trapped in one mind set or genre.’

These boys are driven individuals, eager to earn their band the reputation it rightly deserves.

When asked about their plans for the future, Ben has the right idea when he says, ‘We’ll just try getting ourselves into different cities, there’s more chance of people approaching us then.’

Neil says, ‘We want to keep going, and to keep pushing through, I’m not a massive fan of going back to the same places over and over again, we want to keep broadening our horizons.’ He adds, ‘We’ve done a lot of North West shows so we’ll like to spread out and go down South, we’ll definitely like to start touring.’

The lads of The Shady Elaines are all keen on the prospect of touring, and admit that work commitments will be pushed aside in pursuit of a successful music career. After all, they say, music always comes first.

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