NSG’s Dave Clare sat down for a natter with local musician James Redmond to talk about forming Tramp Attack, joining The La’s, hanging out in La Bateu with Kristian Ealey and discovering the Fibonacci Sequence! 

DC: Hi James, thanks again for the interview. You grew up here on Merseyside, where about exactly and how did it all start for you? We’re you into music from a young age??

JR: My Mum had me when she was really young. As a result, I never really had a steady home life in my formative years. I spent a lot of my time at my Nan’s house. It was pretty rough. My Grandad was a quiet, peaceful man who fought in the Second World War. My Nan was a snarling, no nonsense alley cat from Scotland Road. She was an air raid warden at 16 and said the war was the best time of her life. They lived opposite Yew Tree Cemetery. Mary McCartney (Paul’s Mum) is buried there. There was a chapel there too. I went one Sunday with the next door neighbour to taste the wine and threw up from the taste of the altar bread. It stuck to the roof of my mouth and tasted like shit. I’m pretty sure the priest thought I was The Antichrist. There were no records in my Nan’s house so my first memories of music were from TV themes and adverts. My uncle had gifted me a reel to reel tape player he had bought at a car boot sale and I recorded all my favourites on to it by holding the microphone up to the telly. Life is like a hurricane here in Duckburg Race cars, lasers, aeroplanesIt’s a duck-blur! Might solve a mystery or rewrite history! DuckTales! Woo-oo! Every day they’re out there making DuckTales! Woo-oo!Tales of derring-bad and good luck tales! Later on, I had a Doo Wop group in junior school called The T-Bags. The name was a play on the T-Birds from Grease and partly because we sang a version of I Get Around by The Beach Boys that was featured on a Tetley Tea advert. It was 1989. The Berlin Wall had toppled and round tea bags had just been invented! We stood on the playground at break time and sang songs off the telly. The girls would scream when I wiggled my hips like a ten year old, ginger Elvis. The teachers caught wind of it and in good humour got us to perform in front of the whole school in assembly. It was arguably the peak of my musical career. It was also the year I completed Tetris on The Gameboy.

DC: What was school like for you then, we’re you a good kid? We’re you in the school band proper?

JR:  I wasn’t the most well adjusted of kids. I was taught by my hooligan uncles to never back down. “If they’re bigger than you, then you pick a fucking brick up!” They followed Liverpool all over Europe. More often than not coming back from away games with black eyes and teeth missing. Ged was into scrambler bikes and had smashed the bones in both his legs to pieces when he crashed into a lamppost. He was a very tough lad and my biggest male influence as a kid. Three of my uncles played for The Yew Tree pool team and when the pub called last orders they would all drunkenly pile over the road into my Nan’s living room for more booze and countless ciggies. The women would play darts and the lads set up the pool table on the backs of two armchairs pushed together. It was a three bedroom house and my Nan and Grandad slept in separate bedrooms. That left one bedroom for everyone else. I’d sleep underneath the pool table with the dog. I’d feel safe there until the fighting started.

(Child Of The Ocean_James Redmond)

 By the time I’d reached my early teens, my Mum’s mental health had seriously deteriorated and my Dad wasn’t around much, so I lacked guidance. I felt unwanted and lashed out at times. I never let it slip what I was going through at home and tried to normalise the shit that was going on all around me. Before the end of my time in junior school, the teachers made my mum aware that I was of above average intelligence. They suggested I sit an exam to gain a scholarship at what was then a privately run, historic grammar school called Bluecoat. I’d never seen anything like it my life. It was like Hogwarts inside. The 10 year old me had no reference to this kind of opulent grandiosity. I sat the exam and eagerly awaited the results. I was told I’d failed, but in reality, had passed easily. It was just too much for my Mum to get her shit together to send me. I was sent to West Derby Comp instead. West Derby was notoriously crazy. It was survival of the fittest. Dog eat dog. Proper Lord Of The flies gear. “‘Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!”Built in the 1950s, West Derby was infamous for having ‘The Golley Pit’The older kids would throw your stuff down there and if you were stupid enough to attempt a retrieval mission, the whole school would run over and spit on you. It was fucking disgusting. I was suspended a few times for misbehaving. I was disruptive and confrontational. The headmaster hated me. I didn’t care one bit. He wrote three words on my final school report.“Waste of potential It’s always stuck with me. Not all the teachers disliked me though. There were a few who made a real difference. I’m indebted to them for my love of literature and history. The mad thing is, a lot of really good musicians were created in that environment. The majority of Tramp Attack, The Zutons and The Bandits were all in my classes at school. When I was 13 or 14, a lad called Sean (Payne) started in my year. He’d grown up in New York but now lived around the corner from me. He was 6′ 2″ with a tight curly afro and somebody you did not mess with. We started chatting in lessons and on the bus home. It was Sean’s older brother Howie (later of The Stands) that turned us on to Led Zeppelin, The Stairs, The La’s and Neil Young. We’d go to the Lomax and watch The Real People and Howie’s band – Telefone. We started smoking pot and obsessing over The Beatles, Chuck Berry, Love and Pink Floyd. It was Sean who encouraged me to save up and buy a Fender Precision bass. At 16 he was already one of the best drummers I’d ever seen. We were serious. None of that school band shit for us. We were out in the thick of it, boozing in town, dropping acid regularly and expanding our horizons. We grew our hair and our little gang became the hippest kids in the city. We partied with the students and older musicians soaking up any knowledge we could glean. There was a different vibe to town back then. There was a different vibe to town back then. It was back before the internet and TV was still king. Labour was in power. It felt positive. I never left the house without my precious Sony Walkman. TFI Friday was massive and Top Of The Pops still felt relevant as people actually went out and bought singles back then. It was the summer of Definitely Maybe and the whole Britpop explosion. I was told by the headmaster not to even consider attending sixth form and the dilapidated West Derby Comprehensive was demolished a couple of years later.  

DC:  So you were in loads of bands, most notably Tramp Attack and you’ve done bits with The La’s and you’re good mates with James Skelly .. how did you get involved with those guys?

JR: I met Kristian Ealey at a psychedelic love in/dive called Le Bateau. Upstairs the DJs played Northern Soul, Funk and 60’s gear.I’d sit and watch the walls pulsate with colours and vibrate with sound from the enormous speakers.Cans of Red Stripe were mandatory sustenance and only cost a quid. The tunes were great and it was full of Mods and mad 60’s freaks. All the musicians hung out there.Kris was the leader of another gang of crazies from the North End. He collected vinyl and knew his Green Onions. With his floppy mop of dark hair, he was instantly recognisable. Kris was an actor on local soap Brookside and had these long wobbly legs and jerky dance movements.All the lads got shitfaced and danced back then. You just did. Mods, hippies, scallies and weirdos.One nation under a groove.Shake shake with all your might now if you do it, do it right now put your hands on your hip, yeah come on and let your backbone slip, move your body like your hip just shake. He was already jamming with a few of his mates trying to put a band together but it wasn’t going anywhere fast. He recognised the fire in my belly and knew I could play as good as anyone on the scene. I’d written a few half decent songs by this point and l played with everyone who claimed they could strum a G chord. He asked me to his flat for a jam. I said I’d go if I could bring my mate Dave along too. I’d met Dave McCabe a few weeks earlier whilst out boozing. We had a jam and my jaw dropped. Another fucking genius lunatic. I love Dave now more than ever. He hasn’t changed a bit. We’ve been friends now for so many years. We’ve been together through the good times and the tears. Turned each other on to the good things that life has to give.By then I had a Tascam 424 cassette four track machine. My mind was blown. I could now make recordings in my kitchen and overdub guitars and the crappy brown chord organ I had acquired. I read books on production techniques and how records were made. I’d use different tape speeds and reverse guitars. I was constantly trying to record my own Smiley Smile – Brian Wilson’s abandoned album after Pet Sounds. There were moments of madness and genius entwined.

I became obsessed with harmonies and countermelodies I took my Tascam to Kris’s flat. Boyan Chowdhury was there and Ian Lane, they were old chums from school. Matt Barton was there too. We recorded a song of his called Gary’s Van about someone’s kecks falling down. I thought he was a bit of a plank, to be honest. We all come up with another song together on the spot called ‘Baby Don’t You Knock Me Down‘. A jagged lament to a cheating woman. I’ve seen your face a thousand times before. Selling pegs and heather door to door. Tramp Attack now had songs with intros and middle eights. We all threw lyrics in and laughed our heads off at how much we liked it. The recordings were basic but so was The La’s stuff we loved and all the early blues gear. Something special happened that night. That was our magical demo tape. Lee Mavers came on the scene when we were at peak power. All our gigs were rammed by this point but interpersonal relationships were crumbling. My son’s mother had taken him off to Spain without any forewarning and she had no intention of returning. I was in a really bad way. I didn’t even know where to start looking. It was killing me. Months passed. By this point, my Mum had been diagnosed with a bipolar schizoaffective disorder. She was in and out of hospital hearing voices. She had been sectioned a few times for her own good. She was on really heavy antipsychotics. None of the lads were equipped to help me deal with it and quite frankly, they couldn’t care less. Kristian’s acting career was starting to take off. Dave was looking for a way out, Barton had entered what he himself has called his “whiney little bastard” phase and Laney would just stay in bed for days watching videos. Unable to articulate my feelings, I started to lash out again.  I had gained a reputation as a bit of a bellend. Maybe I still am. I’m not arsed. The band were flying through. We’d end our set with a tune me and Dave wrote. It was a stomping singalong that the crowd would join in with. It was released as our first single. There would be a hushed buzz in the crowd. “Lee is here!”He was a good twenty years older than us and a living legend. I fucking loved The La’s. We all did. The Tramps split acrimoniously even though there were major labels sniffing around us. We’d created quite a buzz in The Big Smoke.Lee put me on a small wage and I set about learning La’s tunes on my bass. I learned the first album in a couple of weeks. I really loved singing harmonies with Lee. He went into the minutiae of how to form the words and mouth the vowels. My grand idea was to save up enough dough and go over to Spain and find Joshua. It was complete desperation. I was living in a flat behind a notoriously rough boozer called The Bow And Arrow. It was bleak. It was just over the road from Yew Tree Cemetery.

(James Redmond_Credit: Elaine Simpson)

My Grandad had passed away by this point, but my Nan was still holding out. I was always her favourite grandchild. She’d surreptitiously slip me the odd tenner folded up to the size of a postage stamp when I’d visit. She only lived around the corner but it was hard work. She was slowly losing her mind and having full on conversations with teddy bears and chain smoking. Her language grew even coarser and I think she got a kick out of saying really nasty, personal stuff to people. Not me though, I was her ‘blue eye’. In truth, she just loved the fact I’d grown up a feral, snotty nosed, street urchin just like her. My own mental health was really bad and getting worse. Lee had a rehearsal room behind a bakery called ‘Classic Cakes’. I took James and Ian Skelly there once. He showed them his recording gear, got stoned, told us his Mum used to lock him in the shed then tried to get Ian to play the drums to My Way by Sinatra standing up! I think they thought I’d finally lost the plot too. Sometimes we would rehearse until the small hours of the morning at my place. Every single note, upstroke and overtone was critiqued to the Nth degree. He’d be inches from my face singing the thumb movements “Down, up, down, down, up, down” watching everything I did. It was really fucking tough. The walls of my flat were really thin and the neighbours could hear everything. “Tell them it’s the fucking La’s” he’d say as we played two hour versions of unfinished songs from the second unreleased album. Gimme the blues Win or lose Gimme the blues One time we were sat there and heard a loud bang followed by a wave of heat. When I stood up and looked out from my first floor window, his white Fiesta XR3i had just exploded. The local kids were little bastards and used to do it for entertainment. By the time the fire engines arrived, it had completely melted to the road. It was there for months. He completely changed the way I played bass. I wasn’t digging in like John Entwistle anymore, I was now using only my thumb for a much fatter, rounder tone. It seemed mental at first but I stuck at it. I still play that way today. It’s a deep knowledge. I went to see Barton’s new band. The Motherlovers. They weren’t great. He was never interested in the finer details of getting a nice guitar sound. I don’t think I ever saw him change a guitar string. He never saved to buy better equipment like everyone else did. Just plugged any old shit into a borrowed amp and bashed away at it. He had no interest in guitars or amps. If he ever encountered difficulties on stage he would just raise his arms and look around for someone to fix it. No finesse. It was me and Dave who wrote the key changes and the stops and harmonised with Kris. These were some of the reasons I used to prowl around rehearsals ‘like a bear with a sore dick’ – not to forget the breakdown I was having that nobody gave two fucks about. The scene was really starting to flourish. Bands like The Stands, The Bandits, The Big Kids and The Hokum Clones and Dave’s new band The Zutons were all over The NME. The Coral were smashing it. The next thing I knew, Tramp Attack had ‘reformed’. I say this in a loose sense as it was only two of the original members. 

I’d cowritten the first single with McCabe and we both wrote the b-sides too. It was as much my band as much my band as any of the other lads. They were playing songs I helped write and arrange with my bass parts and harmonies. They were all ignoring me too as if it hadn’t happened. I mean completely blanking me.They even recorded an album using my bass lines and arrangements. It felt unreal. Years later at an Intenders gig in Camden, I saw Noel Gallagher and he said,  ‘That was great…I saw you at The Bandwagon years ago when you were shit….’ I was puzzled at first. It was such a backhanded compliment but meant in good Manc humour. I never even had the chance to play The Bandwagon but I nodded, smiled and said ‘Nice one la.’ There was no point explaining. And that’s why I never really said much about it for the next twenty-odd years either. Even hearing the words ‘Tramp Attack’ felt like having a knife being twisted in my ribs. They had a song that was recently featured on a BBC police drama set in Liverpool. It was a tune called ‘When The Sun Goes Down. Matt wrote the lyrics, but it was one of mine and Dave’s arrangements. The bassline and original groove were mine and it was one of Dave’s brilliant ‘ice cream van’ riffs. They pretty much played it note for note the way we used to. Twenty odd years later and I’m still having to explain “Yeah, that’s not me, it’s the other lad on bass” to people and it’s a really shit feeling when it’s a song you had a huge input in. To not credit someone for their ideas and hard work is a real gut punch. The Tramps take me back to a point in my life when things were really bad for me, but now and then I’ll listen to the live studio recordings and think we were pretty good for dysfunctional kids. Kristian passed away six years ago. I cried my fucking eyes out and remembered a walk home from town we had together not long before he died. We agreed to put the past to bed and even chatted about making music again. I apologised for all the times I was a gobshite and told him how much I admired him. Kev Kelly who created The Smithdown festival asked me if we would be interested in reforming to play a one off gig in his memory. When I asked Barton, he said he would only do it with the later version of the band.I told him what I thought of that idea and we haven’t really been friends since. Tramp Attack have never acknowledged any of my input. The small amount of music we released still stands up today. Live, we were a force of nature. The original Cosmic Scousers. I’ve been told that the original lineup inspired a lot of people to start their own bands. I’m proud of that. 

DC: I think you and I have a mutual friend, Geoff Sewell, formerly of The Leaf Rains, Geoff tells me he’s played with you a few times, he speaks very highly of you.

JR: Yeah I know Geoff and his wife Joanna. They were really nice to me. Supportive even. I had a crush on Jo’s little sister Caroline. The Tramps had a residency at one of the bars on South Road and I’d hang out with them afterwards. Liverpool is a small town. 

DC: So how did you cope with everything over the last couple of years James? Did the lockdowns have an impact on your creativity ??

JR: “Music is magic. Magic is life” -Jimi Hendrix. I’ve always lived inside my head anyway. I used to play with Lego in my room for hours on end as a kid. Lockdown was really good for me. It gave me time to think with no disdistractions. I studied the Tao Te Ching read up on psychology and watched loads of videos on quantum mechanics and geometry. I got into the great outdoors, and nature and even did a bit of kayaking. I started to realise just how much I’d been drinking and partying. I cleaned up my act and felt so much better in myself. Clarity at last. Of course, there was weirdness and at times crushing loneliness but I had it good compared to some of the people I knew. It wasn’t necessarily a creatively fruitful time, more a time to tie up those loose ends in my brain and make sense of some of my life decisions and situations I’d found myself in.  Sittin’ here restin’ my bones,  And this loneliness won’t leave me alone when I used to play Tetris as a kid, I’d lose all peripheral vision. Completely zoned in. I’d be asleep dreaming about falling blocks and the sweet satisfaction of aligning them neatly. It was defo a compulsion. I started to see that Tetris and Lego were just systems and in turn more or less everything in life is created by systems. I was dumbfounded when I came across the Fibonacci sequence. It’s a mathematical formula for art and beauty. It is repeated throughout nature and the universe. A divine ratio. The more I read about it, the more I saw it all around me. It even translated into music and harmony. Mozart used it to compose his piano sonatas and Antonio Stradivari in the building of his violins. It’s everywhere. Ancient Greek Statues, The Parthenon, The Great Pyramid of Giza, Michelangelo’s David and loads more were all created using this ratio as a guide. It was both mystifying and reassuring. An ancient knowledge that now forms the crux of my spiritual beliefs. I’ll tell you about the magic, and it’ll free your soul but it’s like trying to tell a stranger ’bout a rock ‘n’ roll.

(The Fang_James Redmond)

DC: So, after being in loads of bands and kind of being in the background, having lots of music hidden away on various sites on the net, why now are you ready to make an album and with Av8? How did you link up with Nick Graff??

JR: I put some recordings I’d made online for my own pleasure really. I did a thing about 10 years ago on a collective album called The Daydream Generation. It was the days of MySpace. Some fella in Scotland called Steven Small was really into my tunes and asked if I’d be involved. For me, it was just nice to have some encouragement. I need that sometimes. Most of my stuff back then was me trying to make sense of a messy breakup with my children’s mother. Listen to the words of ‘Will She Meet Me?’ I fucking loved that song. Some of my stuff around that time is too emotionally exhausting to revisit. It’s me trying to cope. Spent a lot of days with women, songs and wine. Spent a thousand nights sleeping on the couches of friends of mine. Nick Graff asked if I’d like to release a compilation of my best songs from that time. I was reluctant. I was out of the game and didn’t really trust anyone. I mastered Nick Power’s album Caravan (which is beautiful) and I thought if the label is good enough for him, then I should get on board. Nick Graff is one of the good guys. He’s in it for the right reasons. A patron of the arts. I think AV8 will go from strength to strength.

DC: I’ve really enjoyed your single ‘Child of the Ocean‘ what was the recording process like? I heard that Dave McCabe and James Skelly were involved with the writing?

JR: I wrote Child Of Ocean really quick. It just came to me fully formed in a flash whilst Mick Campbell was making a cup of tea. I took my guitar into the kitchen and we worked out that great guitar solo together there and then. I cleaned it up a bit, worked out the harmonies and wrote another verse later on. The track lay dormant on my hard drive for a year or two as it was difficult to find people who could get the vocals right. I didn’t want to do them all myself. Me, Mick and (Mark) Percy who plays the drums for The Cubical ended up recording them in a massive reverberant room in a Masonic lodge. There was one tiny window and the Liver Birds looked on as we sang. It was perfect. We travel near We travel far Following the stars.

DC: You have great respect within the Liverpool music scene and Nick mentioned that lots of other people asked to contribute to your album, not just James and Dave, who else is involved? 

JR: I guess it’s not a conventional album in the sense that I haven’t gone into a studio with a load of songs and recorded them that way. It was never going to be that. The whole thing is very much like a musical collage of bits and bobs recorded over the last few years. I’d always be messing about recording stuff and sometimes, if my mates are in the mood, they’ll join in. It’s as simple as that really. It’s a rag tag compilation with some new stuff thrown in there too. It’s pretty low key with a DIY ethic. A great artist called Seasick Sailor has designed the cover and I absolutely love it. 

DC: How would you describe your sound then?

JR: Fast and bulbous. 

DC: When should we expect to see the album James? 

JR: When it’s done I guess. There’s no rush is there? I just need to try and put all the components together cohesively. 

DC: If you could travel back in time to any period, any decade and do a gig, anywhere in the world, where would you visit?

JR: I’d go back and see the 20 year old me and tell myself that things will get easier. I wouldn’t bother with a gig. It’s too much like hard work and I’d end up doing my own head in after 10 minutes.

DC: Any plans for gigs or a tour in the future maybe? 

JR:  Who knows what is around the corner? There’s no shortage of offers but there are no solid plans yet either. We’ll just have to wait and see. I’m happy enough in my bedroom for now at least. 

DC: Once again thanks for giving us the chance to interview you James, good luck with the album and all your future projects. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

JR: Thanks for the interview, please check out my new single The Fang which came out last Friday, you’ll find it on Spotify

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