iFORWARD, RUSSIA!
Debilitating OCD aside, working at NME in the 00’s was a blast. Problem was, I didn’t like loads of the music.
But, along with The Futureheads, The Maccabees, The Bronx, The Gossip, The Long Blondes, The Hold Steady as well as some bands that weren’t called ‘The’ something, like Gallows, Nine Black Alps and Les Savy Fav, it’s little exaggeration to say that Leeds wonk rock quartet iForward, Russia!, just about kept me ticking over and stopped me listening to the Ramones on my headphones all day, every day. I saw and enjoyed few bands more.
I was obviously going to speak to Katie Nicholls [drums] and Whiskas [guitar] for ‘Indie Heaven’.
You know what? I’m not totally sure I know how iForward, Russia! came to be…
Katie: “I think I’d restarted Sixth Form after having a year off being ill with ME. I think my brother realised I’d grown up a bit and wasn’t his annoying little sister anymore, so took a chance on me to be in his new band!”
Whiskas: “I really liked The Black Helicopters, the band that Tom [Woodhead, vocals] and Rob [Canning, bass] had been in, and suggested to Rob we put a band together. Then we realised Tom and Katie were the best people to be in with once we started talking about what we wanted to sound like.”
Katie, I didn’t know you had ME?
Katie: “Yeah. So when I was 16 I left school and passed my British Army Officer selections to go to college to do my A levels alongside army training. I’ve always played hockey too... basically we think I was super run down and pushed myself a bit too much. My mum will always put it down to this one hockey match I wouldn’t pull out, but also I was going to Thailand - on a Scouts jamboree! - so I had a bunch of jabs… We don’t know what caused it. I came home from college where I was boarding at October half-term and basically never went back and was pretty much bedridden for a few months. I was put on antidepressants to give me the energy to get out of bed and do things, which I’m still on 16-years later.”
Well, I’m pleased that’s in the rear view mirror. Speaking of lost Leeds bands, whatever happened to This Et Al, who you released a split single with in 2005?
Katie: “Wu [Neil Widdop, vocals and guitar] moved to Brighton, and I think they had a messy break up with the bass player Gav [Bailey] We still see Ben [Holden, guitar and keyboard] and Steve [Wilson, drums] around at various gigs. They’ll sometimes be at the odd gig down at the Brud [Brudenell Social Club] or at arty events or around Saltaire. I think they both live there now.”
Whiskas: “Wu did a great solo project called Stalking Horse. Ben is now in a band with Owen [Brinley] from Grammatics called Too Much Future.”
Well, that’s one mystery solved. Next, on behalf of irritated music magazine sub-editors everywhere, what was the thinking styling the band name in Faux Cyrillic?
Katie: “I think this was a Whiskas thing - to make it look more Russian, I guess!”
Whiskas: “Actually, it wasn’t me. When we started I was running a venue in Leeds with my friend Andy [Roberts], who I later started Dance To The Radio with. He was the graphic/visual guy. He came up with it and it stuck! Sorry!”
Oh don’t be! I always thought that there was so much creativity around iForward, Russia!. It really was DIY done British. At the peak of the band, how much of your life was devoted to it?
Katie: “This is nice to hear! I think we were really committed to being Do It Yourself, but without cutting your nose off to spite your face, if you know what I mean. Our thinking was, if you can make enough money on merch to book a Travelodge, then that makes a lot more sense than sleeping on floors, especially when you’re touring endlessly. Also, we had to get a bus to do Europe - it wasn’t logistically possible to do it otherwise, but a tour bus really doesn’t go with a DIY aesthetic! But it never made sense for us to sign to a label who would compromise our music or ethics. iForward, Russia! was always for love, not money.”
Whiskas: “It was all encompassing for a few years. Between us we performed so many of the roles, and while we had manager and a press person, a lot of it ended up going through us. An unhealthy amount in truth, but that’s definitely what made it special and easy for fans to connect with us. We tried to play gigs in interesting places and with DIY promoters for reasonable fees and low ticket prices. Hey, look at this photo that I found!”
Bloody hell. That’s me! I sometimes wonder what it was like for you existing alongside a lot of bands from your era that had a very different ethos to you. Because of my role as New Music Editor, I was out on a bunch of those NME New Music Tour dates in 2006. What do you remember about that tour?
Katie: “I loved that tour! The Automatic boys were the same age as me so I got on great with them. They gave me a nice break from having three older brothers watch over me! We had a food fight backstage in Oxford and got told off. Also, I think the World Cup was on that year? I remember we bought a pack of flags and things for the van. Were Howling Bells on that too? We had a lot of fun touring with them.”
Whiskas: “That was a fun tour, but it was a bit stressy for me. That was when our first album was released so there was a lot of stuff going on, and we were little boxed in by the ‘bigger’ bands - the major label bands - and having to adhere to protocol, despite the fact a band like Boy Kill Boy had very little profile. We had a flaming row on the first night of the tour because they tried to insist we price match our t-shirts, meaning sell ours at the same price as theirs and not undercut them. I had to point out that people weren’t buying their merch because their’s were shit, and by making us charge more, they were just punishing the kids!”
I think a lot of people at NME during that time - myself included - felt a bit like you were our band. A lot of us were a similar age, liked similar bands, and there was a large Yorkshire contingent there at the time too! What was your relationship with the NME like your end?
Katie: “Good I think! I don’t know, I was so young and naïve! I probably said some right rubbish! I found it weird on the odd photo shoot when the photographer made me stand at the front.”
Whiskas: “I treated the industry experience as very sociable and it was always nice to see you and the NME gang. I think cos we’d grown up as a band with Tim Jonze falling around PIGS, or having Danny North do our artwork, even when we were in America speaking with KEXP or Brooklyn Vegan, it felt natural. Friendly, even. I think that it annoyed our press guy when Hamish [Macbain] would ring me for a ‘rent a quote’ instead of going through him, but when we had to do an interview with a reporter who didn’t treat us well, it often felt weird.”
How did you feel about the whole New Yorkshire thing? I thought - from the perspective of a music journo who enjoyed making up silly scene names - it was a lot of fun. But I’m sure it’s a different experience being a band involved in it. That said, there was something pretty exciting happening in Yorkshire back then, right?
Whiskas: “I didn’t mind it so much, I just thought there was a big distinction between what was happening in Leeds and some of what was happening in Sheffield where a lot of bands had a very similar sound. And Yorkshire is massive obviously, with crap transport, so it didn’t feel very joined up. It still doesn’t – though I’m a big fan of the Hull scene at the moment. Downtown Kayoto, Low Hummer and Chiedu Oraka stand out.”
Katie: “It was fun talking to Americans who thought New Yorkshire was an actual place! And it was ace being aligned with The Cribs and The Long Blondes. It stopped us being too inside our Dance The The Radio bubble.”
I’ve just spent about three hours trying to find the photoshoot online of all the bands together. Do you remember that?
Katie: “It felt like a school class photo!”
Whiskas: “If it’s the one I remember, I recall it feeling a bit disjointed with us all getting ferried in and out. Again, I remember thinking there was an odd mix of bands, because I think someone like The Research, we were really good mates with, but I don’t think we ever felt like they were part of the same thing that we were. Maybe that’s just because they were on a major label and everyone else was scrabbling around with no money. Whereas us, This Et Al, iLIKETRAINS and The Sunshine Underground were really really close. I still speak to a lot of them semi-regularly.”
I stole this setlist photo from the excellent @ForwardRussiaGigs twitter feed. I’m sure you’ve been asked this many times before, but tell me why the numbers for song titles?
Katie: “There was no deep meaning to it, they were just numbered by what order we wrote the songs. To this day I have no idea what Tom sung about!”
Whiskas: “I think for me, I kind of like that idea of cataloguing stuff. And because the songs never really had a clear hook or chorus, what else are you going to call them?”
Album two, Life Processes comes out in 2008 on Cooking Vinyl. The single ‘Don’t Be A Doctor’, from a year prior, had a ‘traditional’ song title as did everything thereafter…
Katie: “I think people just kept asking about it so much! On the second album though, I had real trouble remembering the titles, so maybe keeping the numbers would’ve been better!”
You made Life Processes with Matt Bayles in Seattle. A legendary name - what was that experience like?
Katie: “That was so ace. He is a legend. And I got to use the same snare that he’s used on most of his albums, records by Botch and Mastodon and so on. It’s just a shame the album didn’t do much! But it was great. Again, because I was so young at the time, now I’m like, “Why didn’t I do that and see that?” during the time we were in Seattle. But I was young and a bit lonely really. I didn’t have much interest in recording. I spent a fair bit of time finding my way around by bus to Hot Topic, malls and fabric and knitting shops.”
To be fair, Hot Topic is way cooler than recording.
Katie: “I do have this great memory of meeting Jill [Faure] from Drowned in Sound [more Truck Festival, to be honest! - Ed] when she was travelling. We watched This is Spinal Tap in an old car park which doubled as an outdoor cinema. People just brought camp chairs and blankets and car seats. Then there was a tiny popcorn stand and a hotdog stand. She couldn’t believe I’d never seen it, and it was the perfect scenario to see it.”
Whiskas: “Matt is brilliant, and I think you can put his influence down to the fact that me and Tom moved into production shortly after that experience. I think, despite his background of working with ‘heavier music’, he had a great knack of arranging and getting depth from the songs - which I think is why he got a lot out of those records. The experience of making that album in Seattle was incredible, being part of the bar and indie music scene there, hanging out at the record shops, going to BBQs with Minus The Bear, seeing an early Helms Alee gig. It was just a wonderful music community there.”
It wasn’t that long after that record came out that you went on hiatus. With the exception of a show at the Brundell in 2013 to celebrate it’s 100th anniversary, and Live At Leeds Festival a year later, that was it.
Whiskas: “We didn’t get the tours or the festivals we wanted to on the second album cycle, including in the US, and people moved on a little bit and we were running out of money, to an extent that we all just needed to find jobs – though me and Katie went to university at that point. I think going on hiatus was really just leaving the door open, but I don’t think we’ve ever been in a position since to pick up the instruments. I think even the two gigs we did in 2013 and 2014 were a push.”
Katie: “I think we were trying to book a tour and it just seemed a bit lacklustre, so we had to sit down and ask ourselves if we really wanted to do it any longer. It was probably the right time. I think the first album did well in part because of the momentum of 18-months of solid touring, which I don’t think the boys wanted to do again. It broke my heart a little bit. it’s all I knew how to do.”
You’re a graphic designer now, right Katie?
Katie: “Yeah. I’ve always been a maker. I did a degree and a MA in Crafts, but then, with my ME, I accidentally fell into doing graphic design. I never thought I’d enjoy a 9-5 job in an office, but I love it! Alongside employment I’ve done bits of my own stuff under the guise of Scissorsaurus.”
Oooh, I saw the Taylor Swift take on Sonic Youth’s Goo sleeve that you did!
Katie: “Yeah, that was me!”
Whiskas, you were everywhere for a time. A proper renaissance man. Then you weren’t. I did like the Honour Before Glory stuff, mind. But where did you go?
Whiskas: “Ha! Well, I’m not sure when you mean. I wasn’t everywhere, but I guess I stopped being in a cool new band. Then I just wasn’t in a band, so I stopped popping up places. I'm not sure there was much mainstream interest in what iForward, Russia! did beyond the initial excitement, so once that was over, people weren't that interested. When we stopped touring, I was quite happy doing my thing at home really. I didn’t miss touring once we stopped. It’s been a bit odd the last few years getting back involved in some ‘music industry’ things, but it’s been fun doing a few things on ‘my terms’.”
Katie, I’m nicking the weird photo above from a feature that NME did around five-years-ago about what musicians from the 00’s are up to now. Right, you are the only person on the planet who perhaps – perhaps – likes Bis as much as I do. Prove you are the biggest fan!
Katie: “Ah, I’m not the biggest fan, I’ll let you retain that title. But they are great!! Manda Rin was an inspiration to me. Leeds City Council used to run a free kids festival called Breeze. I remember asking for her autograph through a fence. And she came up to me after a gig at King Tut’s [Wah Wah Hut] and I was a bit star struck!”
Whiskas: “I’d like to point out that I did buy The Secret Vampire Soundtrack when I was 13.”
Actually, while I remember, Katie - I think I once let you stay in the spare bed in my hotel room when you got stranded after Download Festival one year. Did you ever get home?
Katie: “Ha! I remember that! Our van had broken down near Donnington on a tour, and I managed to coincide going to pick it up with going to Download to see Sam [Duckworth] from Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, who I was pretty good mates with. I remember catching up with all you guys and it got late and you needed to get to Nottingham. I had the van, so it made more sense for me to drive you there and crash, than drive back up to Leeds. I think I got a parking ticket actually. And I moved to Nottingham a few years later!”
I think we might be at the end. Regrets are pointless - but tell me some!
Katie: “I guess I regret things I said to people or the way I acted, just being a bit stupid and young! I remember having a go at the NME tour promoter because the posters weren’t on recycled paper…”
Whiskas: “Like you say, regrets are pointless - but there’s a lot I would’ve done differently, especially following the release of Give Me A Wall. That said, I’m also comfortable in knowing that there is no way I’d have known that was the thing to do at the time, so what are you going to do! I don’t regret anything, but sometimes when I’m in my current job and I’m supporting people trying to be successful in the industry, I think back to the way people with an influence over me treated me when I was in my early 20’s.”