A fond farewell...
While a lot of fans are cheering the reformations of their once favorite bands, there is one band that fans will be saying goodbye to - Hundred Reasons. They managed to establish a name for themselves in the early 2000s with Top 20 album entries and Top Of The Pops appearances, but in recent years the group have seemed to shy away from the limelight with minimal activity and a lack of new material. It was no surprise then that the band recently announced that they will be playing two farewell shows this November, celebrating the tenth anniversary of their seminal album ‘Ideas Above Our Station’. But will these shows be more of a funeral than a birthday? Guitarist and vocalist Larry Hibbitt talks us through what exactly is going on behind closed doors.
“We had for all intensive purposes stopped functioning as a band,” says Larry. “That wasn’t a conscious decision that we made, so we had never split up. It had very much fizzled out and had stopped being the main concern in our lives. I was left with an underlying feeling of...not disappointment, because it’s hard to be disappointed with what we’ve done, but certainly of it being unfinished business. I could feel the beginnings of regret for letting the band just fizzle out to nothing. Every year comes around and we talk about it, like ‘what are we going to do? We’re leaving it in a really shit state.’ Ten years since the record came out seems a good catalyst to get everybody in the band excited about doing some shows and I think we have enough distance from what we’ve done before. In our heads now we can just play all our best songs really well and enjoy that. Everyone else wants us to put a reason on it, like ‘what you going to do if you’re splitting up?’ We have no plans to do anything else, if we felt we could do another album justice then we might do one, but we don’t feel we could, because to be honest our hearts aren’t 150% into doing that. At the moment there’s nothing else planned. It’s not splitting up, that’s got nothing to do with why we’re doing these shows, we’re doing the shows...it will probably be the last thing we do, but we don’t want that to be the point of this. The point is we’re playing that record and other stuff, we’re playing what we consider to be our best songs. Hell Is For Heroes are playing, who are the best friends of the band, who toured with us right from the beginning. We’ve got Cable to open, which is a dream come true because I used to follow that band around the country watching them play. The point is that really, nothing else.”
The end of most things usually mean the beginning of something else. New bands, solo careers, T4 presenters - what’s next for the members?
“Couple of them tech. Andy techs for The Kooks and Passion Pit sometimes. Colin has just got a new job, I think it’s BandApp he works for - some new computer app thing for phones and music. He’s setting that up and he’s working with one of the members of A (Adam Perry). Andy is doing his new band Freeze The Atlantic, he’s the only one getting up on stage on a regular basis. Everyone’s doing vaguely related things.”
But what about Larry himself? Well, while the band have been inactive for some time he has been producing artists in his studio and this will continue to be the driving force in his life: “I’d rather stay behind the scenes, I occasionally do little gigs for people but I’m not that interested in being in a band anymore to be honest. The bit I enjoyed most about being in the band anyway was being in the studio, that’s the bit I find genuinely fascinating. Going on tour is fun because you get to drink a lot of beer and not do any work, but it’s not creatively stimulating, so that’s the bit of all this I can live without. The shows are awesome and these shows will be great, but playing for six months straight - I don’t think I’d be up for that. You’ve got to really love that, where as I would happily sit in the studio for the rest of my life getting fat and playing with guitar pedals.”
On the outer layer this may seem a sad concept for fans, but at the core this couldn’t be a better way to go. So many bands carry on with their hearts not completely in what they do and so many break up with severe bad blood that there would be no possibility of future material, never mind a continuing friendship: “We never got to the point where we wouldn’t speak to each other, I think we got to the point where we’d rather not spend time with each other. The level that we’re on with each other now is actually the best it’s ever been.”
Hundred Reasons will play the following shows:
November
23 Manchester Academy 2
24 London HMV Forum
Click here to buy tickets for Hundred Reasons!
Words by Jamie Carson
“We had for all intensive purposes stopped functioning as a band,” says Larry. “That wasn’t a conscious decision that we made, so we had never split up. It had very much fizzled out and had stopped being the main concern in our lives. I was left with an underlying feeling of...not disappointment, because it’s hard to be disappointed with what we’ve done, but certainly of it being unfinished business. I could feel the beginnings of regret for letting the band just fizzle out to nothing. Every year comes around and we talk about it, like ‘what are we going to do? We’re leaving it in a really shit state.’ Ten years since the record came out seems a good catalyst to get everybody in the band excited about doing some shows and I think we have enough distance from what we’ve done before. In our heads now we can just play all our best songs really well and enjoy that. Everyone else wants us to put a reason on it, like ‘what you going to do if you’re splitting up?’ We have no plans to do anything else, if we felt we could do another album justice then we might do one, but we don’t feel we could, because to be honest our hearts aren’t 150% into doing that. At the moment there’s nothing else planned. It’s not splitting up, that’s got nothing to do with why we’re doing these shows, we’re doing the shows...it will probably be the last thing we do, but we don’t want that to be the point of this. The point is we’re playing that record and other stuff, we’re playing what we consider to be our best songs. Hell Is For Heroes are playing, who are the best friends of the band, who toured with us right from the beginning. We’ve got Cable to open, which is a dream come true because I used to follow that band around the country watching them play. The point is that really, nothing else.”
The end of most things usually mean the beginning of something else. New bands, solo careers, T4 presenters - what’s next for the members?
“Couple of them tech. Andy techs for The Kooks and Passion Pit sometimes. Colin has just got a new job, I think it’s BandApp he works for - some new computer app thing for phones and music. He’s setting that up and he’s working with one of the members of A (Adam Perry). Andy is doing his new band Freeze The Atlantic, he’s the only one getting up on stage on a regular basis. Everyone’s doing vaguely related things.”
But what about Larry himself? Well, while the band have been inactive for some time he has been producing artists in his studio and this will continue to be the driving force in his life: “I’d rather stay behind the scenes, I occasionally do little gigs for people but I’m not that interested in being in a band anymore to be honest. The bit I enjoyed most about being in the band anyway was being in the studio, that’s the bit I find genuinely fascinating. Going on tour is fun because you get to drink a lot of beer and not do any work, but it’s not creatively stimulating, so that’s the bit of all this I can live without. The shows are awesome and these shows will be great, but playing for six months straight - I don’t think I’d be up for that. You’ve got to really love that, where as I would happily sit in the studio for the rest of my life getting fat and playing with guitar pedals.”
On the outer layer this may seem a sad concept for fans, but at the core this couldn’t be a better way to go. So many bands carry on with their hearts not completely in what they do and so many break up with severe bad blood that there would be no possibility of future material, never mind a continuing friendship: “We never got to the point where we wouldn’t speak to each other, I think we got to the point where we’d rather not spend time with each other. The level that we’re on with each other now is actually the best it’s ever been.”
Hundred Reasons will play the following shows:
November
23 Manchester Academy 2
24 London HMV Forum
Click here to buy tickets for Hundred Reasons!
Words by Jamie Carson
