Interview With Scott Powell Of Camens
We talk to one of Stokes’s finest exports, Camans frontman Scott Powell about life, music, and some of the deeper things that make Camans one of the most exciting bands to come out of the north of England in recent years! Championed by Steve Lamacq on his BBC 6 music show and Jim Salveson (XS Manchester), the boys have steadily grown an organic following which has lead to bands like Scouting for girls, The Futureheads, The Feeling, The Snuts, and The Sherlocks asking them to support them on shows up and down the country. Make no mistake, it is only a matter of time before these boys become established as one of Britain’s best indie rock bands!
NSG: Welcome guys,2020 was looking like an epic year for you wasn’t it? Can you tell me what you guys had planned and how has the pandemic affected that?
Scott: It’s such a sad year, isn’t it? I think it’s like that for everybody, basically, the big thing in music is I’m sure you’re aware is momentum. So what we tend to do, is like most bands in our position is you’ll spend like the last quarter of a year, maybe recording the material that you’re going to release next year and then you’ll put a plan of action out, so you’ll release a single in February, releasing a single in April then release a single midsummer, maybe an EP back end of the year. And what you’re trying to do is use the momentum from each release to make the next release bigger and better and reach more people and make more noise. And then hopefully, that noise helps to spread the word and bring people into the circle and get people aware of the band. So the big thing about the pandemic was that we put two singles out our plan had started, we put handbrake out in February, and then leave me and piece is out, which we put out literally in the pandemic, mid lockdown. We did a lockdown music video for it because we couldn’t get out and do the proper video we wanted to. And then yeah, after that, like the idea would have been to go in as them singles were coming out and record the next batch of songs to keep the momentum going. Obviously, we’d locked down, we weren’t able to do that, we weren’t able to get in a practice room together and write together, we’re a very organic band when it comes to writing as well. So like, I’ll turn up with an idea. And then it’s definitely a case where four of us will work the idea and make it sound like the band. It’s not a case of right. I just give the lads a song, and then they play what I tell them. So not being able to get in a room together to have that natural organic writing experience really hampered the writing process for us. So yeah, killing all the momentum killed the writing process. And yeah, we are still waiting really, for a time when I mean, we’re back practicing. But at this point in the year, like we’re now at the point where it’s like, right, we might as well go again next year now because all the momentum from the early singles is sloped off because we haven’t been able to keep the new music coming for people with not been able to get into studios and, all the other restrictions.
NSG: How did the band originally come about?
Scott: For those of you that don’t know, we were originally under a different name and we ran for a few years as our previous incarnation. At the end of 2017, we had to rebrand the name but still with the same band members, we changed the name and started to change the sound of the band and became Camens, we went a little less folkie, put the acoustic guitar down, and went a little bit more electric and a bit heavier and Yeah, we’ve been Camens ever since.
NSG: We first spoke way back in 2015 when you were supporting Liverpool band, The Jackobins at a festival in Lincolnshire, since then you’ve gone from strength to strength supporting massive names like Scouting for girls, The feeling, The Snuts, The Futureheads, and many many more! Probably a naive question on my part but if you could pick one, what would be the most insane or favourite show you played out of all of them and why?
Scott: We’ve been lucky enough to support some amazing bands, we’ve been very fortunate and it’s really rewarding to have earned the right to play alongside some bands like the ones you’ve named. They’re all great gigs. I mean, the scouting for girls ones, especially with a thousand plus crowds, was a real step up from like the 400 capacity venues that we’d been doing up to that point. So that was amazing in that respect. And then the hometown shows, a lot of the hometown shows like The Snuts and the Futureheads gigs, lottery winners, bluetones, and tonnes of other ones really, most of them tend to be hometown shows at places like the sugar mill or the underground, which are always great because they’re smaller, more intimate venues. But they’re actually packed. Hopefully, we get back to them days soon because obviously, they’re a thing of the past at the moment. The Snuts one especially was a very surreal gig, we played with the Snuts at the sugar mill in Stoke and it was a 400 capacity sellout. We didn’t have to sell a single ticket for the gig because it had already sold out when we were offered the support which is helpful because it’s nice to not have that pressure of selling tickets which everybody’s under in this industry. So we just got to turn up and play a live show to a packed crowd of people most of which had never heard of us before, which is kind of like the dream gig really, if that’s what you want to do, so you can spread your net. And yeah, it was amazing like The Snuts, their Scottish lads, they’re doing so well at the moment and they’ve got like this army of traveling Scottish fans that must follow them everywhere they go, so in the middle of Stoke-on-Trent on like, a Thursday night, there was like 400 people in the sugar mill. I reckon at least a third of them were Scottish. And there was like St. Andrew’s crosses all across the front barriers, which was mental really ‘laughs’. The Snuts lads were great! Really down to earth lads, we had a drink with them and plenty of photos, we’ve kept in touch with them ever since. It’s really great to see such a good band doing so well, It gives you the hope that it’s possible, you know, because it’s good stuff, and it shows that if there’s good guitar music out there, There’s an audience for it, which is definitely what they’ve got.
NSG: So you guys are from Stoke-on-Trent? Apart from Lemmy, Robbie Williams, and Wedgewood, is there anything else stoke is famous for that some of us may not know?
Scott: Yep, dead right. Lemmy, Robbie, Wedgwood, all cornerstones of the Stoke on Trent community! Both Vale fans though Lemmy and Robbie, so we don’t talk about that much, there are not that many famous Stoke fans. I’ll have to be the first hopefully one day! What else have we got? Captain Smith, Captain of the Titanic, was from Stoke. Reginald Mitchell, He designed the Spitfire, he was from Stoke. Now we’re struggling ‘laughs’.Oh Staffordshire oatcakes, if you’ve never had a bacon and cheese oatcake before you are missing out!
NSG: Do you have any cool or strange hobbies? And what are they?
Scott: I don’t think so really because when you’re doing this to the level that we’re trying to do any spare time that you have is taken up one way or another by some job for the band. There’s like an endless list of jobs that constantly mean doing that never get done because there just isn’t the time you know, in the day to do them, we’re pretty normal lads really, we love our football, Josh and Luke like getting about and do a lot of traveling too. Josh is a very handy lad, he could basically build you a house top to bottom if you asked him to, he put motorbikes together and things like that, he’s very switched on. But yeah we don’t really have time for hobbies, ‘laughs’ while trying to crack the music industry and take over the world. But yeah, pretty normal stuff. We’re big movie buffs as well, there’s a lot of film references and pop culture references in a lot of our songs because we’re a big film and TV fans in general. So yeah, look out for them.
NSG: You’ve said in the past that you like to write about moments? Could you tell me a bit more about this and the part it plays in the writing of your songs like Handbrake and slept on the sofa?
Scott: Yeah, definitely in terms of writing about moments, like Ray Davis from The Kinks is one of my big songwriting heroes, idols, whatever you want to call it. I love his stuff. People say that Ray paints you a picture in words, songs like Waterloo sunset, you can see exactly what’s in that song. Everybody probably gets a very similar picture. He paints such wonderful scenes with words and that’s kind of what I see he is doing. He writes moments like he probably couldn’t write you a novel, he probably couldn’t sustain it over, you know, 200 pages, but in a three-minute pop song, he was the absolute king of being able to take you to a place, taking you to dead-end streets, taking you to war, taking you to Waterloo sunset, taking you to the back garden on a sunny afternoon! That’s what he was brilliant at! And that’s kind of what I’ve ended up becoming because of my love of Ray and the kinks and the way he writes. You mentioned “Handbrake”, Handbrake is literally about that moment when you were a bit younger and you’d just drive around with your missus in the car because you’re too young to go into pubs but old enough to drive. It’s literally about those ten minutes you’d sit in the car in Mcdonald’s car park, eating food and listening to music or those moments when you’re sitting outside her house before she comes out to meet you. You know, it’s just about those moments and trying to kind of paint those moments for people. “Slept on the sofa again”, is a song about winter when you have to go to work early in the morning, it’s dark, and then you spend all day in an office. Some of us do, I do. And then when you come out at five o’clock, it’s still dark, so you literally never see the sun, you know, because you’re inside all day, it’s dark in the morning, It’s dark at night, so it’s about that moment when you realize that that’s happening and just how soul-destroying an experience that is for so many people. We try to not make it too miserable. It’s about quite a miserable scenario. But hopefully, with a kind of uplifting message, in the end, it kind of just paints this picture of the guy, who might as well not bother even going to bed because you know, he’s only going to be up in six hours anyway. And it’s still going to be dark so what’s the point? So, yeah, not the happiest song in the world but definitely one of the ones we’re proudest of. There are other ones as well, “Violent video games” is about waking up with your missus, and that kind of five minute period when you’ve both just kind of woken up, one of us has got to go to work. And you’d both rather just lie there, it’s literally just about those five minutes, it’s got nothing to do with video games, it’s just a nice title, you know, it’s just something that fits well, the actual scenario is like those little two to three minute moments in everyone’s life where you’re lying there and you don’t want to move. That’s all video games is about. I could go on for various different reasons. They’re all about the similar moments that we all kind of experience. I think they’re kinda the same for everybody. You know, everybody has that moment on the settee, when they realize they’ve got to get up and go to work again in like five, six hours. Everybody’s had those moments in the car with their missus or their fella, everybody’s had those moments lying in bed Like, if it’s real for me here, it’ll be real for people anywhere else in the world. I think the best stuff connects like that, you know?
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NSG: Do you believe in ghosts and have you ever seen one?
Scott: Ha ha, iv seen a few at some our gigs now And then! like, in the light of day, when the sun’s up, and everything’s okay. No, of course not. But maybe sometimes, like one o’clock in the morning, in the house on your own, a bit cold in the winter. You just put your head under the cover and just go no no, it’s gonna be okay. Everything’s fine. I’m sure everything’s fine. Just go to sleep as quickly as you can. I think everybody’s like that! But rationally no, I don’t think I have.
NSG: Some of us have been quite isolated during the pandemic, can I ask you, when did you last get a real decent hug off someone and who was it?
Scott: What a beautiful question man! I did two months in total confinement really only going out for essentials, from the start of lockdown up until two months after it and then two months in having basically seen nobody other than people who came to check and maybe stand at the door kind of two meters away. After two months, the weather got a bit better and my mum finished having to go and work in the office, so she began working remotely, I was furloughed, so after a couple of months on the basis that they were isolating as well, I decided to go and isolate up at my mum and dad’s house as opposed to my house so that I could be with people as opposed to being on my own because I just couldn’t take it anymore. To be fair, it was too much. So yeah, after two months, I had a really good hug from my mum and dad, you’re never too old for that, you know?
NSG: If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life what would it be and why?
Scott: Chicken! I’m a slave for chicken, every kind of chicken, fried chicken, chicken curries, chicken sandwiches, you name it! Chicken crisps, Give me the chicken, Barbecue chicken. Chicken wings! Yeah, all about the chicken Man! I’ll have chicken please, chicken!
NSG: What’s your main goal in life?
Scott: I mean, musically, people say things like, are you successful? Have you made a success of yourself? I think that the thing with success for an outsider in the music industry is people think that success is Arctic Monkeys touring the world playing to “40,000 people” every night. That’s like one measure of success, It’s certainly the absolute pinnacle. There’s probably only a handful of bands in every generation that gets to do that and then everybody else is on a scale somewhere between people who you know do it as a hobby and get the fulfillment out of it and then there are stages along the way of people who play slightly bigger venues, people who have a core following in one area and do really well. Personally, for me, I just want to get up every day and be creative. I love every aspect of creativity, I love making the videos, I love the artwork, I love writing the songs and seeing them come together, I love the studio time when you see something that’s slowly progressed over two or three months of writing and pre-production and demoing, become a finished product that you then get to release, I love the sharing process and seeing what people think of it, I just love creating! “So” yeah, if I could get this product and this brand to the point where it paid the bills, and I could just get up every day and make stuff and people enjoyed it enough that I didn’t have to do a day job, that would be a success for me, anything above and beyond that would just be you know, a bonus! Obviously, we all want to be the Arctic Monkeys or the Kings of Leon someday but like I say that’s unlikely for most of us. So it’s about judging barometers of success and certainly, success for me would be covering the bills and being able to spend my time doing something fulfilling, as opposed to something unfulfilling which most jobs are to me if I’m honest.
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NSG: Thank you for giving us the chance to interview you, anything else you’d like to add?
Scott: Thank you for supporting us and taking an interest in the band. Obviously, like I just said, I’m a creative, so anybody who takes interest in what you create and enjoys it and wants to get involved and help, It’s massively appreciated. And you’re doing exactly the same thing with the magazine now, so we wish you every success! I suppose the only thing I’d want to say is that every single one of us It doesn’t matter who you are in this industry, talking about music, writing about music, musicians, booking agents, sound engineers, artwork, designers, video directors, all of us, every single one of us. Like there’s only ourselves that can look after ourselves and make sure that there is still an industry here when we can all go back to live music, regardless of these arseholes in London that are doing everything they can to make sure that there’s not! so everybody just stick together and everybody support each and we’ll get through this and let’s make it brighter on the other side.
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