Johnny Foreigner Interview

In these days of internet led viral sensations, it's more than a little heartening to hear of a band earning fans the old fashioned way.

With a multitude of single and EP releases to their name, Johnny Foreigner have toured the length and breadth of Britain. Hell, the Birmingham trio are so adept at navigating the motorways of this great nation that they probably have a Little Chef loyalty card.

Shipping out to Brooklyn to begin work on their second album, 'Grace And The Bigger Picture' arrives with Johnny Foreigner becoming a genuine cult phenomenon. With more and more tour dates selling out, the band have even begun to notice the growing trend for JoFo soundalikes - becoming an inspiration to young British musicians eager for something fun yet challenging, uplifting but not dumbed down.

With Johnny Foreigner feeling confident enough to even release a remix EP, ClashMusic caught up with singer Alexei Berrow to talk the talk...

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So you’ve just come off tour – how did it go?

Aw yeah it went amazing! It’s kind of the first time we’ve been able to sell out venues on the whole tour. It’s been made watching so many people sing along. It’s such a massive improvement on the last tour, in terms of more people coming along which has been great.

Word certainly seems to have spread about the band. What do you attribute this to?

Well it’s just through word of mouth. It’s not like we have much choice, we don’t have the same industry profile as when the first album came out. It’s just word of mouth. We done it in a proper, natural way in that we’ve played, and we’ve played well enough for people to want to come along next time. It’s nice. It’s very, very satisfying.

On a negative note you had a mic stolen in Leeds – any news on this?

Yeah. (Laughs). I think it’s long gone. Our label’s bought our sound man a new one. It wasn’t so much the money aspect of it, because they’re not that expensive, it’s just that it completely ruined the night. It meant a lot to our sound man, I think I was the least famous guy that he’s worked with!

You said in the statement that you’re going to come back to Leeds, has the show been confirmed yet?

I think it’s been booked. There’s so much stuff to do. As soon as we came off tour we had a few days where we had to do some real work, then we did a few shows so I haven’t really sat down with email. I think it’s been confirmed, but we don’t know about it yet. That’s how it usually happens!

I take it you won’t allow the incident to affect the way you perform.

No, no. Stuff goes wrong around us all the time – we just laugh at it now.

You also released a remix EP recently, what made you do this?

We’ve wanted to do it for ages and ages. All our friends do stuff like that on the computer all the time, but none of us have done anything about it. We never really had access to all the parts before, the individual separate tracks for all the songs. We got all the parts of this specifically so we could do this. It was great fun – we’ve had a few more back now that we didn’t get back in time for the EP. I don’t know what’s going to happen with them but we’ll find some way of putting them out.

How did you go about choosing people to remix the songs?

Everyone we know seems to have some kind of laptop that they can do stuff like that on. They all sit on the tour bus and do things like that. So we just asked people we knew, really! All the bands on there are people we’ve grown up with, and we’ve all been friends for a while. It’s kind of nice to start working together!

You tour quite often, when did work on the new album begin?

We did it in February. We had, literally, a two and a half week gap between jumping off one tour and jumping on another. We kind of toured, did that and then jetted off with Hundred Reasons the day after, I think. That seems to be how it works. There’s either long periods where you’re sitting around being bored or there’s times when too much stuff happens and you struggle to fit it all in.

Is song writing a group effort with Johnny Foreigner then?

I sort of get a vague idea, a verse and a chorus, something like that. Then I take it everyone else and we flesh it out. We get a song from there.

Does the way you perform live influence how you write songs?

It’s a shame, we don’t really think about things like that it all happens very naturally. We tend to just sit down and write. It’s not like we discuss whether the chorus is prominent, or make sure one part is repeated. It seems to all fall into place very naturally, since we’ve been playing together for so long we can all agree on what it sounds like in our heads. The more we play together the more the idea becomes focussed. I know that sounds hideously pretentious but I hope that makes sense!

What led to recording the album in Brooklyn?

Well Alex Newport emailed us. Which we couldn’t believe. We knew who he was because of At The Drive In, and he also did one of the tracks on a Death Cab album that we really like. We got a mail from him saying “yeah we’d really like to record you!” and we were just shocked. We didn’t know much about his other stuff until we got out there. We YouTubed him one night when we were in the apartment and realised that he had done massive acts! We had no idea.

What does he add to the band in the studio?

Just like a proper punk approach. Like, if it sounds good then record it. Don’t think about anything too much.

I’d imagine that would suit you quite well.

Yeah I mean we spent a whole year having to think too much, possibly, so it suited us pretty well.

Did that allow you to experiment then?

Yeah. Well we had a far clearer idea of what we wanted to do than the last one. It wasn’t that we wanted to do other stuff. But I mean before we did the first album we thought “oh we want it to sound like so and so” but not really knowing how to describe it. Whereas with this one I think our musical vocabulary has expanded. It’s less experimentation and more just being ourselves.

Were the songs completed before you went into the studio?

All the songs were written in the gap between leaving one studio and going to the next. It was all written in hotel rooms, vans and places like that.

Did the praise lavished on your debut album take you by surprise?

Yeah I guess, to an extent. We were confident and we knew it was good, but we didn’t expect to get such a good reaction. I don’t know, we’re also cynical enough to know that the music business is more about advertising. We’ve never been that bothered about press, to be honest. It’s reassuring, and it gives us confidence and opens opportunities for us. But at the same time we were doing this for a while without record deals and without any of this. We always enjoyed it, so if it all fell apart tomorrow we would still find a way to do shows.

Didn’t you release a CD-R album years ago?

Yeah! That was mad. We released that ages ago, made about forty copies and then completely forgot about it. Then we looked on the internet and “oh shit, there’s that album!” We write so frequently it’s not that much of an effort to get it out there.

You’re well known for frequent singles, EPs etc – does the rise of the internet remove the need for a compilation of this material?

I’m not sure there’s much need for a compilation for a band at our level. Maybe when we split up, or if one of us dies in like a hideous car crash or something, it would be good to cash in. But at the moment we’re still working on new songs, so it’s more about getting those out. I think that’s the one good thing about the internet destroying everything is that it just makes everything so much easier for people to get into, and it makes it easier for us to get songs out there.

Could the extra remixes be released as a download, then?

I haven’t the foggiest. I really don’t know. I’ve only heard two of them, I think there’s another two that have been sent to our manager. But we’ll find some way of putting them out.

Is there something quite refreshing in the remix process?

Yeah completely. It’s amazing. You record the songs and when they’re done you just sort of switch off and move on to the next ones. It’s really good, we can listen to is and enjoy it. We’ve been listening to them and trying to work out what they’ve done with each bit.

You won’t be able to repay the favour I suppose.

No, we’re so inept. Junior is working on it though, the last remix on the EP is one that he did. He’s been remixing a few. But we’re not up to the same level as everyone else.

Were you able to experience much of the Brooklyn music scene while you were out there recording?

No we didn’t get to go out at all. We spent the first day going into the machine shop where we made our first album to just go and say “hi” and grab a few bits and pieces that we left there. Then every other night we kind of woke up, went into the studio for twelve, stayed until twelve and then went home and slept. It was pretty intensive.

Are you finding that through touring you’ve encountered bands and people that you have quite a lot in common with?

Yeah completely! I was trying to think of some witty answer but basically we’ve made a lot of friends through this. A lot more than we would if we’d done some other job for a certain amount of time. It’s weird with other bands on tour you live in each other’s pockets for two or three weeks, and then you go off tour and you never see them again. But it just makes the re-union all the more emotional.

Have you noticed new groups who sound like Johnny Foreigner?

I still can’t get over it. There are bands who I listen to who’ve said “oh come check us out you’re a massive influence on us” and some of them are just awful and horrible. Some of them are absolutely brilliant and I don’t see any of us in them at all. It’s madly flattering. There’s a band called Mammoth Mammoth who I’ve been listening to and they completely blew me away, they’re amazing. They sound like Tubelord, So Many Dynamos – they’re just fucking incredible.

It must be quite flattering.

Completely. It’s amazing. I never, ever expected it. It makes you feel like part of a chain. We started off writing to our favourite bands saying “you’re awesome, can we please do a gig with you?”. Now we’re finding people doing the same to us.

Johnny Foreigner's new album 'Grace And The Bigger Picture' is out now.