Interview: Joel Peat From Lawson

I caught up with Joel Peat from Lawson to talk about the band’s brand new single, Money, their new album plans and tour antics.

So you’ve recently released your latest single, Money, what’s the song about and what inspired it?

It’s kind of a bit of a joke for us all. Back when we were starting out we’d do loads of gigs all over the country and you kinda do it all for free, you know, you never get paid for it and the promoters would take all the money on the door. We always used to laugh about that, “where’s the money?” like, how are we gonna live? And how we were sort of living on each other’s sofas. It was just a bit of a joke at the time and we always wanted to write a song about the fact that, you know, even though we never got paid for it, we had the time of our lives travelling around the country with our best mates. We didn’t necessarily need to get paid to enjoy it. We always wanted to write a song about that. It sort of came about really naturally last year. We never really thought about it since we started out and started the idea back in the day, then it naturally sort of materialised into this pop song that everyone can sing along to. I think it’s come out at a good time, ’cause everyone’s skint from Christmas as well!

Does Money reflect the sound of the new album?

I think it does, yeah. I think that’s the way it’s going. We released Roads and that was sort of a bit of a different direction but the more we chatted to everyone, the more it sort of became apparent that people just wanted “pop lawson” and they just wanted to sing along to the songs. They’re a bit more light-hearted. We always want to play stuff that people like and enjoy.

How do you think both your sound and the band itself has evolved since the first album? 

We’ve done so many gigs like we sort of know what each other wants and what each other’s thinking. When we come to write the songs and go to the recording studio everyone seems to know exactly what is gonna make it sound like Lawson, and that’s just got better as we’ve gone on. Yeah, I think we’ve grown up and matured a bit and grown into the band. We were really young when it started so it’s nice to have had time to mature into it.

Are there any tours planned for later this year?

Yeah, it will be later this year. It will be after the album. We’ve got another single after this, which I think is probably my favourite off the album actually, in fact it is yeah it’s my favourite song off the album. Then, after that single will be the album and then we’ll be going on tour after that, so like an album tour. So I can’t wait, it’s gonna be really good.

Speaking of tours, do you guys ever play pranks on each other on tour? What’s been the best prank? 

I don’t know really, there’s been loads of stuff … not probably that I could repeat … We had this support band once, the support bands tend to get a lot of stick. There was like a balcony behind the drum kit behind the stage and we had, like, catapults and we were like putting fruit and stuff in that and firing it at them in their set which was probably distracting people from their music a bit but it was hilarious. Ryan is usually the one like, if anyone gets stick in the band, it’ll be Ryan every time. He’s sort of the butt of most of our jokes.

Is there anywhere that you haven’t been on tour yet that you would like to play? 

I’m sure there is, but I just don’t know about it yet. There’s a venue in Colorado in America called Red Rocks Amphitheatre and it’s like carved into a canyon or whatever. It just looks phenomenal. I saw John Mayer do a gig there, not actually saw but on the internet. I think ever since then, I’ve just always wanted to play there so that’s a big one.

You’ve played both big arena shows and small intimate shows, which do you prefer? 

I think it’d have to be intimate shows. I like to see what people think of what we’re doing, you know what I mean? Like, if you’re doing arenas it kind of becomes one huge … like one person, like you’re playing for one big entity. Whereas if you’re playing a small venue, you can see everyone like how people are reacting to it and like are they grinning or are they like, “not sure about this”. But yeah, it’s just nice to be able to see what people think about what you’re doing. There was a gig we did in a place called Albany in New York, it was a really small gig. We were having a right laugh, we just let loose and were just really on form that night and we could just hear this girl screaming from the back, “you’re enjoying it now aren’t ya!” It was just funny, I love gigs like that.

Last question and kind of related to the new single, if you did have unlimited money for one day, what would you do with it? 

I’d buy all the world’s guitars, that would be the first thing. I’d probably buy my mum a nice house and I’d look after my family. I dunno, I’d make sure all the lads like, I’d probably take them out for a Wagamama’s or something, that’s all they’d get. I’d probably go and record in Abbey Road, that’d be cool.

– Sarah Lusher.