What began as a vehicle for four musicians to get together and create music, quickly spawned the birth of COW. Drawing on influences such as Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr, and Bill Ryder-Jones the band have become festival favourites at the likes of Focus Wales and Smithdown Road Festival. At Across the Threshold 2018, COW were tipped as one of the top 10 acts of the weekend by Getintothis which opened up doors for the band and secured support slots for the likes of The Spook School, State Champion, The Lotts, and Ali Horn. With numerous positive reviews under their belt, the band have built up a steady following across the North West and North Wales and their live shows often draw comparisons with Grandaddy, Pavement, and Crazy Horse.

COW released their debut EP at the tail end of 2019 and were once again praised by Getintothis as one of the new bands to look out for in 2020. Sadly, like all other bands in 2020, gigging and recording ground to a halt, however, the band continued writing and rehearsing and now have a new EP ready to be recorded.

Having recently signed with MAI 68 Records, COW are ready to take 2021 by the horns and have plans to release their first physical release in the Autumn of 2021.

NSG: Hi guys hope you’re well, how are you doing? So we lost almost an entire year in 2020 didn’t we, as far as writing and recording, were you able to carry on like normal, or did that change with the pandemic? 

KL: Yeah it’s been a bit of a lost year hasn’t it? 2020 was a tricky one for us. Our practice room closed from April – early August so we couldn’t get in to write new songs. I used this time to tie up some loose ends and we managed to record a cover of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s “How I long” in our bassist’s home studio which we released in July of 2020. We did have plans to record an EP over the summer but for obvious reasons that didn’t happen and has been rescheduled for later on this year. In September once it looked like things were returning back to normal, we had a recording session in Wrexham with Ben Dempsey Sawin (Eitha Da). This is all finished now and scheduled for digital release on the 16th of April. 

NSG: You seem very close as a band, how long have you been together and how did you all meet? 

KL: We are close, and I’m glad that comes across. We’d basically spend all of our time together if we didn’t have to live with our girlfriends. As a band, we’ve been together since the end of 2017 but we’ve all known each other a lot longer than that. I met Doug (Drums) in about 2009 whilst we both lived in Bangor, Wales. We were in a grunge band (Sona) together for a couple of years and then both moved to Liverpool around 2013. As luck would have it, Jay (Guitar) and Web (Bass) who met each other at Manchester Metropolitan University were visiting a mutual friend in Bangor. I happened to be at the same house party and got on well with them both, but I never saw them again until years later when I moved to Liverpool. I was watching the Manchester derby in a pub on Smithdown road and bumped into Jay and after a weekend of copious amounts of drinking, we all discovered that we all lived around the corner from each other having all moved to Liverpool to get involved in the music scene. I had a country band at the time (The Mexican Walking Fish) who were on the hunt for a bassist. Web who was playing Cello in Jay’s other band (The Good Host) joined us on bass and both of our bands started putting on shows together until I fired my drummer and guitarist. I asked Doug to join The Mexican Walking Fish on drums, which he did, but I’d already started to go off that band and wanted to return to something a bit heavier. The rest is pretty straight forward really. Four of us shared a practice room. The four of us spent a lot of time together and ended up jamming the songs that would now be known as COW.

COW (Credit: Billy Vitch)

NSG: YOU have an extremely heavy sound, you mentioned some of your influences but can you tell us more, like did this sound evolve gradually, or was it what you were aiming for from the beginning?

KL: I wouldn’t say we are extremely heavy, I think you’ve just seen us when we are the heaviest band on the bill. I’d be lying if I said I had a grand master plan and that everything we’ve done has been part of it because I haven’t and I highly doubt any band does. We actually started life off with Jay playing an acoustic. I was over the fucking moon when he finally brought his electric to practice. To me, that’s where we started to develop the sound that people have come to expect from us from a live show. I’m better at loud than I am quiet. I always have been and this was where I could see COW heading. It had been years since I had an outlet for heavy music. I had to retrain myself how to write songs like this again. Years of writing miserable country pop songs had had an effect on my songwriting. There’s a huge chunk of my gigging life where I never owned an Electric so I started there. I bought a Jazzmaster and started writing songs like I was 16 again. Some of these songs are still in our set, but we’ve definitely developed our songwriting in the last couple of years. I’ve always had a love for guitar pedals, but in The Mexican Walking Fish, I had no real need for any. That’s also changed. I’m now buying the pedals I wanted when I was 16 and had no money. This has shaped our sound even further and I can’t wait to show you our new songs.

NSG: “All my friends are dead to me” is the name of your EP and the title track, what’s the story behind that?

 KL: I find it really hard to write happy songs. Most (all) of my songs have some sort of melancholic/negative theme. “All My Friends Are Dead To Me” is no different, it just so happens that its name also suited an EP title more than the others. There’s no big revelation in the lyrics, it’s just a song about getting to a certain age where people you’ve gone to school with have all settled down and had kids and you don’t see them anymore. I suppose it’s also about not having your family around when you need them and sitting back and letting that sink in. There’s a lot of lonely people out there. It’s a song for all of them.

COW (Credit: Billy Vitch)

NSG: What was the last gig you played? I imagine you never expected to be in a situation where you could not play live because of a pandemic, how are you coping with not being able to perform?

KL: Funny enough it was in Bangor, our first gig back there since moving away. From what I can remember it was a good night, but Doug’s Mum and Dad own a pub in Bangor which we ended up back at for a lock-in after the gig. The night’s a bit hazy if I’m honest with you. As for the pandemic, I had an idea it would affect our gig plans when I started seeing bands like DIIV cancel their European tours and head home early, I just never knew how severe it would become and how shitty our Government would deal with it. To begin with, I coped pretty well with having a break. We’d been busy from November to March, but as the year went on it really dawned on me that we might not get a chance to play again for the rest of the year. I was more upset with not being able to record and see out our plans for releasing a follow up EP later in the year. As much as I miss playing gigs, I think I miss going to see bands more than playing. Fingers crossed it’s all behind us now.

NSG: What do you think the future looks like for live music? Do you think we could ever get back to full capacity live shows again?

KL: I’m hopeful we can, other countries are slowly getting back to normal so there’s no reason we can’t. I’m not sure if we’ll see fields of 10’s of thousands of people just yet but I’d like to think some of the smaller venues can open to full capacity by Sept/Oct. 

NSG: What’s 2021 looking like for COW? 

KL: We’ve signed to Mai 68 Records so 2021 has started off pretty positive for us. We’ll be releasing a digital single next month (April 16th) which will then be part of a physical release later on in the year (once it’s recorded). We’re booked back in with Ben from Eitha Da to finish off the EP. This will be my first holiday in over a year too, so I’m pulling out all the stops… Premier Inn, with Breakfast and unlimited WI-FI. We’ll be promoting that release with a tour in September/October and we’ve booked some Cities and towns we’ve not yet played at, so I’m well looking forward to that. There was a fair few gigs from last year rescheduled too so we’ve got some festivals (Focus Wales, Smithdown Road Festival) to look forward to, along with some support slots for By The Sea. On paper, it’s the perfect year for us. I’m just waiting for that fucking asteroid to change path and head towards earth.

COW (Credit: Billy Vitch)

NSG: Why Cow? Is there a story behind the name? 

KL: We are named after a song by my favourite songwriters Mark Linkous’ band Sparklehorse. There’s a song on the first album called Cow. If you’ve not heard it before go and check it out right this very second. Incidentally, our last gig was on the 10 year anniversary of ‘Mark Linkous’ death so we decided to cover “Cow” in homage, but good look finding “COW – Cow” on Youtube. Seriously though, go and check out Sparklehorse.

 NSG: Do you prefer cats or dogs and why? 

KL: I was terrified of cats for about 25 years of my life until I got one so for that reason I’ll say Dogs.

NSG:  If you could cook for and sit down for a meal with three people from history who would they be and why?

K.L: Fucking hell that’s a difficult question.Erm, Kurt Cobain – mainly because I genuinely do believe he was murdered, and I’d need to hear from him what happened. That and I fucking love Nirvana. Owain Glyndŵr “Prince Of Wales” – Because I am a Welsh Nationalist and I have so many things to thank him for. Sister Rosetta Tharpe –  For me, she is the reason we have Elvis and Johnny Cash. For a black woman to do what she was doing in 1940s America makes her one of the bravest, groundbreaking, and most influential people of all time. 

COW (Credit: Billy Vitch)

NSG: What has been the best thing you have taken from, learned, or achieved during the lockdowns?

KL: I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts whilst working from home during the lockdown. One of the best ones I’ve found is from local record label “Society of Losers“. Each one interviews a promoter, label, band, or artist from our local area. This really did give me an insight into how other bands in the area go about things. I’ve been taking notes and taking the relevant points on board. One point in particular which I think came from “Salt The Snail’s” Krystian Hudson is to not sell your band short by continuously playing your hometown. COW went through a phase of saying yes to every gig offer we could get, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing when you’re first starting out, but you need to give people a reason to come and watch you. Why would people come to your gig on a Thursday night when they can come and see you the following Saturday? That’s taken nearly 20 years of gigging for me to admit I’ve been doing it wrong. These podcasts also taught me that there is a great sense of community in some of the Liverpool scene. All you have to do is reach out to other bands/musicians and ask them for help. That’s another thing that’s taken a while to sink in. On a personal level, I’ve learned to not put things off. Do all the mundane shit you keep putting off until Sunday. Reply to emails, keep good records, it’s so much easier in the long run. I had to reschedule a tour three times in the last 12 months and trust me it was so much easier with everything (contact details, bio, reviews, release dates, etc) right in front of me.

NSG: Thank you so much for your time Kyle, is there anything you’d like to add?

KL: Thanks for having me. Please give us a follow on Instagram or Facebook to keep up to date with any release or gig dates we have coming up. And when this is all over, just remember, you’ve had a year sat on your arse moaning about not going out. Go and see your mate’s bands.

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Record label: Mai 68 Records 

Listen to COW on Spotify