Junk Pups – Interview and Live Review (The Hug and Pint 17th August ’23)

(All Photos Courtesy of Chris Hogge Photography)

Last week, Junk Pups played their second headline gig, this time at The Hug and Pint as part of the Endless Summer series of gigs. Having been meaning to do so for a long time, I finally managed to catch up with the band (and Angel!) after they’d sound-checked ahead of the gig.

The Ginger Quiff: So, just a bit of background first and foremost, how did the four of you get together as a band.

TGQ: What about the name – Junk Pups, where did that come from?

Dylan: Do you remember us doing that? We were on Zoom, and we had a bunch of name ideas, I can’t remember what any of the other ones were, no, Trolley Dolly was gonna be one of them, I think we were like, nah, that could be a cool song though.

Jack: Yeah, I think the four of us had different ideas, then it was just sort of a random word generator, like, I don’t know, I just thought the words worked together.

Dylan: Yeah, catchy, and silly. What we sound like catchy and silly dogs…

TGQ: It’s interesting you mention your sound, as you’ve got quite a distinctive sound. It’s quite different, with elements of a variety of different things going on. So where do you take their influences from? I’m assuming from your baselines, and cracking Psycho Killer cover, Talking Heads has at least some element of an influence. Where else do you take influences from?

Jack: I think Talking Heads is definitely a big one. And….. Dolly, right? Yeah. Now we’ve started to go down a sort of like country fusion direction, we’ve got a few new songs and we’ll play them tonight. Country music is really fun, I mean, I love Dolly Parton. They’re really fun songs to write too, so we’ve gone a bit in that direction. But I mean I love Kate Bush too, everyone else brings their own stuff.

Ishi: I guess with my guitar, I learned playing mainly through blues music, so that’s where my parts are at, kind of bluesy, which kind of fits in the base layer of what you write.

Jack: Yeah, I think I kind of like everything. I just like music in general and so anything goes.

TGQ (to Dylan): Yeah, you like a bit of punk and hardcore too

Dylan: Yeah, so you know my mum, she brought me up on thrash, then grunge. I love all the Kim’s. Kim Gordon, Kim Deal, Kim from The Muffs…. Kim Kardashian (laughs), yeah, all the Kim’s. Girls on bass are the coolest.

TGQ: What about yourself Sophie?

Sophie: I kinda like just simple drums to accentuate all the rest of the band’s music (TGQ: I think Sophie is underselling herself here, just watch the bundle of furious energy behind that kit when you see the band live)

TGQ: I can’t not ask about your vocal Jack, because I remember the first time, I ever heard your voice. It was like “Oh my God. Where did that come from?” So, when did you discover you could sing like that?
Jack: I don’t think I sung like I do in the Junk Pups, before the Junk Pups. When we started the band, I was sort of like into Soul, Motown, James Brown, all these great soul singers, so I think that kinda had an influence on what I was going for.

Dylan: I think also, we worked with Walt Disco and when we were recording with them, you catch yourself just copying Jocelyn, she’s just got such an iconic sound.

Ishi: I think we did take a lot of influence away from recording with them, but I think you with your voice they were like, another take, another take. Jack hit a really insane high note in one of our songs and everyone was like, do that again!

Jack: I remember one time they were like can you go higher than that? I tried and I was like, no, no…

Dylan: Yeah, they layered it, there’s like so many parts to the harmonies, I think they really brought it out of us.

Jack: Yeah, I think they’ve really brought us out of our shells in terms of like exploring what we can do with our music.

TGQ: When did you record with Walt Disco?

Jack: Well, we started like last summer…

Ishi: And we’re still going

Dylan: They’re just demos, something to give to other people and be like “this is what we’ve got in mind.”

Angel: Jack does impersonations of Dolly in his new songs…

Jack: I put on a voice, like a Southern American voice for the country songs. It’s just like, naff, bit it’s a bit of fun. Putting on a character, like the Thin White Duke.

Dylan: Yeah, the guy with the hat came up to me earlier and said, “where’s your singer from”? And I was like “Here”, he said he thought Jack was from America, I was like, “Nah, he just likes putting on a silly voice”.

Jack: I’d love to play a gig in Nashville or somewhere

Dylan: Yeah, hello SXSW here we are…

TGQ: You’ve gone down the country route with new songs, have you gone down the country themes for your lyrics – you know, my wife’s run away and my dog has died….

Jack: I watched a Billy Connolly thing, a comedy thing about how to write a country song, and he’s like, you need to have something about God in there, you need someone to die, all these themes that have to be in a country song. We’ve got this new song, Jesus Wept, I took inspiration from the Billy Connolly thing for that, I though, I’ll include Jesus, but I’ll make it really daft. What I like about country music is there’s always like a joke or a punchline at the end of it. A lot of Dolly Parton stuff does that, so I wanted to make it a bit daft, a bit tongue in cheek.

TGQ: I wanted to touch on the music scene in Glasgow. The city has always had a reputation for great music. I’ve been going to gigs and following Glasgow bands for aeons as I’m a bit long in the tooth now. But I think just now it’s such a good time to be into music in Glasgow. I think there are so many outstanding bands, Water Machine, Brenda, Bin Juice, Sister Madds, Avocado Hearts, Bottle Rockets, Sacred Noise …. I could go on, there’s so many good bands. If you go back to the 80’s when I was first into music, there were loads of bands that were four blokes in guitar bands. The scene in Glasgow just now seems to be much better represented across groups like women, the LGBTQ and Nonbinary community. Do you recognise that yourself? Though the representation is a lot better. I think it’s still got a way to go. What’s your view of it from the inside?

Ishi: I think we’re really proud to be in this band, with all the identities that we are. I think it was a bit daunting at first as we’re very openly a queer band. We just did a gig up in Edinburgh, a Pride after party, and it was just such a communal vibe. It was amazing

Jack: I think it is getting better, I think what I’ve noticed though is like, all the behind-the-scenes people, it’s all the same types of people. I’d maybe like to see more diversity there, but yeah, I enjoy being in a band that’s not 4 blokes.

Ishi: I think everyone is sick of it aren’t they?

Jack; it’s funny, when you go to see a straight band, you’re like, what have they got to song about. You’re like “what problems do you have?“ apart from like money, and my girlfriend broke up with me…

Dylan: There are so many incredible scenes in Glasgow, the Death Metal scene in Glasgow, Black Metal scene, Hardcore scene, we’re getting shout outs from America, we’ve got The Crowded Flat, every single one of these bands with Crowded Flat is insane

Ishi: It’s all very positive, we’re all really pally and go to each other’s shows

Dylan: it’s about bigging people up and it’s all very genuine, you see a lot of the same people at different gigs, but it’s because we all want each other to do well, especially when it’s not all the same style and types of music.

Jack: I think there are so many different things going on in the music, so many different scenes under the umbrella of Crowded Flat, bands who are musically different, but they’re not separated into different shows or different scenes.

TGQ: I think, from my perspective as a music fan and someone who, like you, likes all sorts of music. It sometimes gets boring watching bland generic music. I love it when a band is really hard to pigeonhole. It’s like, I don’t know what their “scene” is, I just love their music.

Ishi: Yeah, that’s what we always say when people ask, “what’s your music?” I literally couldn’t tell you.

Dylan: I feel like if you try and make all your songs sound the same, you’re only gonna go so far and you’re gonna get bored.

TGQ: You mentioned the same people working behind the scenes, but the music scene itself has changed a lot in terms of how people consume music, I used to buy records when I was young, I still do, but everything is streaming now. How hard is it for a band like you to get a foot on the ladder these days.

Dylan: I think there’s a lot of stuff that like, unless you’re in a band, you don’t know about, like playlists you can ask to be added to… I don’t think we knew about that when we started.

Jack: You learn as you go, yeah.

Dylan: You see bands get bigger and you’re like, I see how you did that, we could try that.

Ishi: Basically, starting off, we really just tried to do gig after gig after gig, really just tiny amounts of cash at a time, we were literally doing them a couple a month. every single month and like just really building that small amount of cash up and then trying to get into a studio and getting our music out there and getting people to listen.

Jack: There’s so much work you don’t think about. We don’t have a manager, so it’s like all of us doing everything ourselves. Sending emails back and forth, making sure everything is right.
Ishi: Give yourself credit, it was all you.

Dylan: We all started signing off e-mails as Jack…

Jack: Yeah, and that kind of becomes a chore and you have to remind yourself why you’re doing it, it’s definitely harder, but we’ve made it work.

TGQ: You talked about recording. with Walt Disco, and there was talk of a video shoot (much hilarity ensued), and I’ve been desperate for new music to be released. So, tell me, what’s happening about new songs coming out?

Jack: OK. So, we just finished mixing the lead single that we’re doing the video for. It’s been such a faff. because we recorded it with Walt Disco and of course their set up was good, but it was similar the kind of set up you’d have in your bedroom.

Ishi: Remember, they were doing it for free, so it was just kind of for this demo kind of thing.

Jack: Of course. So, we spent some time trying to find a good producer to make it sound more expansive. We finally got in with Luke from Chime, and he’s made it sound really good. So that’s pretty much done. We’re filming the music video on 13th September.

Ishi: We’ve had so many little bumps…

Dylan: So many different plans and locations…and that’s another thing, Jack said when you have to do everything behind the scenes, that’s just another chore. I need to find this, I need to find that, am I free this day, am I at work? Will work let me get this off? The four of us have jobs. Four people with completely different hours, you guys have uni. So, it’s like when do we all have the same free time? When can we get all these people to help? I don’t know about you guys, but I was just like getting sick of it, thinking about it all the time. I was like, I just want to wake up and its done.

Jack: I feel like we’re getting somewhere now though, we’ve recorded three other songs with Walt Disco. I was listening to Spoon-fed the other day, its decent as it is, it just needs a few things changed.

It’s so funny, you can kind of tell what Walt Disco have worked on as well…

Ishi: We’ve got other songs as well, I’m talking about Hoi Polloi, I don’t know how to describe that, we went to the studio with them and they started adding all the cool synths and stuff, just like they really elevated it, but not in a way that’s like “we’re taking over, this now sounds like Walt Disco”, just accentuating Jacks songwriting and every other part it was like really, really fun to watch and they just talked a lot about the next steps of production.

Dylan: Changing up the drums and stuff

Ishi: Yeah, and now we do that live. So, it’s literally like having that opportunity with them has really, really benefited us. And it was so fun as well.

Jack: Working with other musicians when you’re recording is really good, because they can add stuff that you don’t even think of before, especially with Walt Disco. I’m pretty sure me and Dylan talked about Walt Disco before we even started the band, so it was really cool to work with them.

We have the single, the Trophy Wife single coming out this year.

Ishi: I think it won’t be long now.

Jack: We’re shooting the music video pretty soon, it’s like we planned for it to be like this month, way back in, like April or something. It’s sounding really good though.

TGQ: This is your second headline gig, your first was for your single launch. Are you expecting a busy night tonight?

Dylan: Well, I don’t know. I know that there’s a bunch of people who were like, “Oh, I don’t know. I might be there. I might not”. And then, apparently there was like an influx of ticket sales last night.

TGQ: Well, it’s cheaper to come to than Devo

Jack: I know! We love Devo, and when I saw we were playing on the same night I thought “Aw typical”.

Dylan: At least we’ll still have We Are Not Devo – shout out to them, they’re awesome.
There’s a bunch of gigs on tonight in Glasgow, it’s Thursday. So, there’s Dirty Laundry Thursday’s. I know a lot of folk in the in the hardcore scene and they were like “which one will I go to?” I was like, “either way, I don’t mind, but I would love to see your face.

Jack: I think it’ll be fun; I’m looking forward to it.

TGQ: Is there are few songs you’re playing for the first time tonight?

Jack: A couple of original songs and one cover which is really fun

Ishi: It’s exciting to play the cover, cos Jack has some fucking range, this guy can go from like way down low, then he hits the high notes like he does on Trophy Wife. And Jack has a personal connection to the song.

Jack: Should I talk about it? (concerted “yeah” from the rest of the band)

My mum’s dad, my Papa John, we used to stay at has before we go to school, he’d wake us up and stand on the windowsill and sing Big Bad John, because his name was John. And I thought for years that he had made-up this song.

I’ve never asked him about it, but I looked it up and found out it’s this old country song by Jimmy Dean called Big Bad John, so we’re doing that tonight as a cover. My mom was like the other day, gonna do Big Bad John for your Papa, so I sent him a video and he was really chuffed with it.

And I’ve started playing the banjo on stage, so it’s a different vibe, I feel, from our last headline.

TGQ: Is that the Billy Connolly influence too? (More hilarity ensured)

Jack: Billy Connolly can actually play the banjo!!!. I’m still learning…

TGQ: So, a single out this year, video coming, gig tonight. You’ve got a couple more gigs coming up too?

Thanks a million to Junk Pups for giving up some of their time pre gig to chat to me. The question is, was the subsequent gig any good….?

Before the main event, there was a duplet of support bands to enjoy, both of them new to me. First up, Glasgow band Sweet Bleach, who played a combination of their own songs alongside some carefully selected cover versions to give a taste of their influences, including a cracking version of Stupid Girl. Then it was the turn of Macclesfield trio Queen Cult to entertain with their unholy racket, the threesome of Maise (guitars and vox), Brodie (drums) and Piers (bass) play a thunderous style of rock, dirty guitar and bass, creating a melee not unlike that of a mix of Placebo and Daisy Chainsaw, definitely one’s to watch.

What followed was a combination of frivolous fun, unadulterated joy, and exquisitely crafted tunes, kicking off with their fun side playing How Much is that Doggy in the Window complete with dog hand puppets, and ably assisted by a series of barks and yelps from the audience. I wonder what the collective term for a group of Junk Pups fans is. Whatever, they will all be instantly recognisable bedecked in new t-shirts being punted by merch-gurl Angel, undoubtedly the most glamorous person in the venue.

After the intro, the set was bookended by the band’s singles to date kicking off with the wonderful Front Yard Flamingo and closing n style with the sublimely striking Miss Behave, in between was a set packed with familiar Junk Pups songs, two covers and some excellent new songs alluded to in the pre-gig interview.

As usual, the bands take on the Talking Heads classic, Psycho Killer was off the scale, played at turbo speed, the combination of Dylan’s thumping bass, Jack’s striking vocal, Ishi’s impeccable guitars and Sophie bringing the noise from the back really hitting the mark. Then of course Jack’s tribute to his Papa, the cover of Big Bad John, a combination of the voice of Johnny Cash and the brash swagger of Lux Interior coming together to do the track proud. I may be one of the very few of a certain age in the venue that night that recalled a certain TV advert during the song (Domestos anyone?)

As promised Jack brought the banjo out for a few new songs including the excellent Jesus Wept, alongside much in-band joking and pelters as the tuning of said banjo took longer than expected, with Jack joking about buying cheap cables from Amazon. As he alluded to in the interview, he may still be learning the banjo, but it certainly brought an additional texture to the band’s sound and their alt-country tracks.

As I’ve come to expect when I see this band, every one of them brings their A-game, the combination of each of their unique talents combining into a seamless sound that really hits the sweet spot. Jack playing vocal gymnastics all night, hitting every note in his extraordinary range perfectly with an impeccable American twang to boot. Ishi’s guitar playing is meticulous, bringing that effortlessly cool blues edge to the band’s sound, whipping out the steel tube at one point for some subtly cool slide guitar. Sophie, the quiet unassuming one during the interview is anything but when she get’s behind that drum kit, don’t let her fool you when she says she likes to keep things simple, I was watching mesmerised at one point as she pounded the skins, her face a picture of studied concentration. And of course Dylan and their bass playing that belies their years, creating a sound that puts many players with many years of experience to shame.

Hearing songs like Hoi Polloi and upcoming single Trophy Wife played live has really whetted my appetite for the release of the latter song, and it’s so far scuppered video. if you have still to experience the Junk Pups live experience, there are plenty of opportunities coming up, they are a band on the up and up and not to be missed, I wouldn’t want you all to suffer from fomo now…

Junk Pups – Instagram

Queen Cult – Website

Sweet Bleach – Instagram