meet the band

So who are those five random blokes that get up on stage every weekend and bang out your favourite indie tunes? Well, this is the place to find out!! Below is a small biography about each member of the band plus some insight knowledge of each individual.

 

There is also an interesting read into the history of the band and how it was formed. It is somewhat strange to believe that the lads have only known eachother since the joining the band and were brought together by advertisements in shops and online.

The idea for he creation of "The Sound" was formed back in June 2008 after Aaron Morgan took a trip home to London to visit family and friends. During this visit, he watched his brother's band "The Kick" gigging in Wimbledon at the popular Irish bar "O'Neils". They were banging out all the current indie and rock music in front of a jubilant crowd and this resulted in a major kick up the backside to get something started.

 

Aaron returned to Plymouth and had a chat with his work colleague Paul Mitchelmore, who was up for some jamming sessions. After the two had spoken of their desires for bands such as Oasis, The Killers, and The Kings Of Leon at their booze fuelled Christmas meal seven months previous, Aaron suggested that they should try and kick start a new band.

 

The ad's started appearing quite quickly over numerous site's on the internet, poster's in music shops and in the local newspaper. However, it wasn't a case of just sitting back and waiting for the calls, it was also necessary to chase up adverts of musicians that were also available to get involved with a fresh new band. However, the calls started to come in quite rapidly, within the first week, seventeen people had made contact to get information on the adverts that they had seen.

 

One of the first people was Steve Webster. He noticed a poster in a Plymouth music shop and gave Aaron a call. After a lengthly conversation, the three decided to met up at "The Tamar" pub for a chat. Steve brought along a demo CD of the previous band he was in and Aaron and Paul had a listen once Steve had left. They only listened to a couple of tracks but felt they clicked with Steve straight away and made the call the next day to take the scouser on.

 

Aaron then started to make call's to people that had placed their adverts online. In September 2008, Aaron spotted an advert on gumtree for a drummer and one on MIYC for a singer. The call's were made and auditions arranged for the two guy's to pop down. The night in question was also the opportunity for two other singers to audition for the band.

 

Dean Adair arrived with his bleach blonde hair, black goatee and long black coat. He set up his kit and starting playing. Each head shot up in joy to the fact that they may have found their drummer. The first two singers arrived and gave their all but were unfortunately not up to the required standard and were told that they weren't required. The last singer of the night was Mark Norman. He was pretty much poohing his pants from the moment he stepped into the room but was ready to show what he could do. The band played an acoustic version of "Live Forever" and then the full version of "Teenage Kicks". They had their man ... they had their band and it was actually sounding pretty good.

 

However, in November 2008, Dean had to unfortunately quit the band due to personal circumstances so the void was left for yet another drummer. After three months of trying to get a band started, it was falling to bits almost immediately. So the hunt began to look for another drummer. It seemed that Christmas had come early in December 2008 when the band got a call from Ash Baker who was interested in replacing Dean. Ash was given an audition and played really well during the rehearsal and was offered the vacant boots of Dean. However, the curse of the drummers once again struck and in January 2009, Ash decided that he didn't feel he suited the band and unfortunately decided to quit. So the band were now resigned to looking for ANOTHER drummer!!

 

But, in March 2009, a response came from a bloke on bandmix who was interested in the vacant postion. Aaron had pretty much contacted a good ten drummers and had one response (thank's guys)!! But let's put it this way, that one response was better than the other nine all put together!!

 

Tristan Fry popped along for an audition and everybodys mouths dropped in the brilliance of how this boy could play a drumkit!! That rehearsal alone, the band managed to get through the repertoire of around sixteen tracks that they had learnt since September 2008. So the issues of drummers was put to rest and Tris grandly stepped up to the throne to complete the final line up of the band.

 

Next stop .... a name. With five blokes putting their suggestions in the cauldron of creation, then you can imagine how difficult it was to decide on one. From the early days, the band went under the name "The Stations" but after a string of bad luck which included Paul's brand new Marshall amp blowing up on stage while supporting Asgaerd, the name was scrapped. It was in December 2008 after the band completed their last ever rehearsal at the PMC that a name was agreed on. While standing outside waiting to go home, the discussion of a name continued until Aaron noticed some grafitti on the studios walls. A selection of mixer dials had been painted on the wall with one of them labelled "sound". "The Sound" said Aaron and everyone went quiet, thought for a moment and agreed. The name took a while to settle in but after a few days, the band were happy that "The Sound" was the name of their new band.

 

The band set themselves a deadline of August 2009 to start gigging. They worked tirelessly in creating a set ready for the live circuit and had already taken a few bookings for late August and September. But on Friday 24th July 2009, the band received a call from "The Cherry Tree" asking if they could fill a cancellation slot. The general feeling of the band was that they had to take the gig. The excitement of waiting until August was replaced by playing a gig within the next eight hours .... and what a night it was. The pub was absolutely packed with friends, relatives and locals and everybody was singing along to the tunes the band were pumping out.

 

The band very quickly filled up the rest of their 2009 diary and 2010 was pretty solid before the end of the year. The band played some fantastic gigs in that time which included the UPSU Freshers night where over 3000 people were in attendance. However, by the end of 2010, the strains started to show. In January 2011, Paul walked out of the band leaving them to go out as a four-piece. The advertisements quickly went out and there was a huge and quick response for replacements. The first guy to attend an audition was a very keen, Owen Laughton. You could say we were a bit hesitant given Owen was only 18 at the time but he quite simply blew us away. An absolutely amazing talent who never stops learning and can pick out a tune in seconds. The auditions immediately stopped as Owen was simply, too good to cast off. It was the next day that we offered him the part and he was ecstatic. This was on the Tuesday ... on the Saturday, he had learnt the set and was gigging with us at The Spinning Wheel Inn. Four days to learn over 30 new songs .. amazing!!

 

So the band was solid once again ... so we thought. In May 2011, Steve announced that he would be leaving the band later in the year and Mark was also vocal in his desire to also leave. "The Sound" had just taken on a new guitarist and within months had lost a bass player and vocalist. This is where the hard work began. The band advertised for a new bass player but the response wasn't anywhere near as high as the beginning of the year. By the end of June 2011, the band had taken on Harry Hopkinson. Tris contacted Harry on "Join My Band" and invited him along for an audition. It was, without a doubt, obvious that Harry was a very talented bass player and came in with more han his list of five songs. A second audition then confirmed that Harry was our man and we offered him the gig.

 

Steve's last gig was on Saturday 30th July at The Post Office Inn which left it open for Harry to play his first gig with the band the following night. With Mark not attending rehearsals in July, Harry had to come to terms with the set without a lead vocal. Instrumental rehearsals are not the ideal thing when you are bedding someone new into a band, especially if you are trying to get gig ready. But fair play to Harry, he was brilliant and he made it really easy to work with him.

 

The band then started to advertise for a new singer. At the same time, Mark also left the band just two weeks after Harry joined so the band were left without a singer. Our close friend Sam Johnson filled out the remainder of August. We had to unfortunately cancel September and October due to the current search for a vocalist. However, there are a fair few people that wanted a shot at becoming the new frontman. We auditioned 24 people over August and September and then narrowed the list down to just three. We then had the awkward job of making a decision to let two very good singers down. At the end of the day, we could only offer it to one person and Martyn Crocker was that cut above the rest. He is eager, ambitious, committed and LOVES music. Martyn joined at the beginning of October and for the next four weeks, learnt a set that he was extremely unfamiliar with. However, by the beginning of November, Martyn had polished over 30 songs ready to get the band gigging again. The band had pencilled in The Barbican Live Lounge as the return. At this present time of typing, we are days away from the comeback ... and we can't bloody wait!!