Interview with Chay Snowdon: ‘The loud shirts love big riffs!’

London-based rock ‘n’ rollers, Chay Snowdon, of the fiery guitars and colourful shirts, gave us their debut EP, Are You Sitting Comfortably? (Then We’ll Begin), in March, featuring five addictive tracks with reach-for-the-skies choruses, oodles of swagger, punchy drums and a wiggle-infused bass line that pulls you in.

The band comprises frontman and guitarist, Chay Snowdon, Jack Hawkins (lead guitarist), George Roach (bass) and Luke Westwood (drums). Snowdon and Roach are old school friends. Snowdon met Hawkins at university and Westwood was introduced to them by Hawkins.

Are You Sitting Comfortably? (Then We’ll Begin) is a slick offering, punctuated with Snowdon’s unique and powerful vocals, anthemic riffs, creating catchy, tight and highly loopable tracks, drawing comparisons with Catfish and The Bottlemen and Kings of Leon.

‘What The Kids Want’ is an energetic, rifftastic track that is interwoven with dialogue inspired by films: ‘It’s based on my love of Hollywood and westerns, set to a Hollywood blockbuster, as is our song ‘Tough Guys Die First,’ Snowdon said. ‘When we did the demo, we had bits of ‘Scarface’ in there but we couldn’t use that for copyright reasons, so a voiceover actor that Jack and Luke know did those parts for us. The line “It’s alive, it’s alive!” is taken from the first Frankenstein film. It’s a mix of lines borrowed from films and lines I wrote. It was inspired by Tony Montana (Al Pacino’s character in Scarface). It’s funny, though, because when we came to record it, I had the order of all these lines in my head but it didn’t work! I changed the order and ended up leaving some of it out.’ I tell him that it’s such a great idea that I’m surprised we don’t see musicians doing it more often and the only similar example that we can think of is Paolo Nutini’s Iron Sky, which features an actual clip of Charlie Chaplin speaking.

‘What The Kids Want’ is essentially a cautionary tale about kids wanting too much: ‘It’s the clichéd things that a young person might be after in life, stuff I’ve wanted myself, a commentary on social media and people saying they want lots of stuff,’ he said. It’s that mixture of ambition sprinkled with naivety and about having big dreams but not much of a clue and the mistakes we make along the way.’

As the story in the song unfolds: ‘Let me paint you a picture, let me set you the scene, a young man from England, and the American Dream, some quote she read on a poster, she captioned it on the gram, 200 likes in a minute? I guess they must be her friends.’

‘There’s some photographic evidence somewhere of some dodgy shirts back then’

The punchiest song on the album for me is ‘Loud Shirts’, which deserves to be their signature song, given their penchant for cool and colourful shirts. I ask if it is based on them and Snowdon laughs: ‘It’s definitely based on us! It’s pretty much based off at school when I’d go to a party at someone’s house and I’d be standing there in the middle in a loud shirt. There’s some photographic evidence somewhere of some dodgy shirts back then but now my taste has refined itself! I like a Hawaiian shirt at the moment, you get that holiday feel.’

The song hints at wild nights out: ‘This kind of thing has all happened before, different year, different house, different door, dodgy dance moves on a sticky dance floor, not some kind of modern day innovator, there’s always someone to carry it all on later, and plenty who’ve done it all before.’

Given the variety of loud shirts they’re sporting in the photo accompanying this story – a paisley-come-Hawaiian number, one with stars, another with pizza slices and another featuring what appears to be a dandy parrot – I ask him if there’s some serious shirt competition going on: ‘Oh definitely, we try to outdo each other with the loud shirts,’ he laughed. ‘George, he’s building up quite a collection, I’m keeping a close eye on him! For birthdays and Christmasses, family members buy us a few, it’s an obvious thing to get us, so the collection’s growing!’

One of the band’s main focuses was to make sure that the tracks have just as much energy when recorded as they do live. However, this time, they had the added hurdle of recording in the midst of a pandemic. With a live room dedicated to recording, a microphone wired up to a caravan that sat on the driveway and the best weather Britain could muster, it was an experience that you couldn’t help but inject energy into, they say.

‘It’s an amalgamation of westerns like A Fistful of Dollars, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, of Clint Eastwood films’

‘Tough Guys Die First’ pays homage to Snowdon’s love of westerns: ‘It’s an amalgamation of westerns like A Fistful of Dollars, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, of Clint Eastwood films, really. He is the man! If I could ride on a horse to work every day looking as cool as him, I would!’

More sombre topics have also found their way onto the EP. ‘Men Cry Too!’ deals with mental health issues: ‘For me, everyone has met someone who has suffered a degree of mental health worries, it’s about checking in on people. It’s not just about men, it’s about people in general. I check in on my mates a lot, it probably gets on their nerves. It’s that premise of “How are you?” The first time you ask someone, they’ll say “Fine”. If you ask them a second time, you get the real answer.’

This is encapsulated by the lyrics: ‘The bombs have dropped and the culprits fled, what do you mean let’s put this to bed? Just suppress all the stuff in your head, it’s easier that way …’

Another track, ‘Cash Only’, is the most poignant song on the album. ‘It was the most recent one written for the EP and it goes in a different direction,’ he said. ‘When I was on a night out in Bristol before lockdown, there was this girl outside, I think she was homeless, chatting to a guy. I couldn’t hear what he said but I heard her reply, “No, cash only”. I thought, I’ve got to commit this on paper, I wanted to show that I’m aware of these situations. It’s one of those where the tune over the top is quite upbeat but there is a darkness underneath, you’ve got that duality.’

‘My guitar part is a means to put the song forward’

Snowdon is the songwriter in the group: ‘I have an idea in my head about the instrumentation and then the others make their parts better. My guitar part is a means to put the song forward. With those guys, the loud shirts love big riffs! Jack has a big riff in ‘Tough Guys’ that we heard and knew it had to stay in.’

He’s a fan of Dublin-based rock band, Inhaler, and West Lothian, Scottish band, The Snuts, whose recent album W.L. went to number one: ‘We supported them before lockdown, so to see them doing so well and get to number one is brilliant. Those guys were so welcoming, they made space for us on their merch table.’

I ask him if he’s listened to any songs recently that he wishes he’d written? ‘I think I’ve got two,’ he said. ‘One of them would be Miley Cyrus’ ‘Midnight Sky’. It’s got a lot of imagery in it, it’s the perfect balance of pop and music I want to make, her voice is very impressive. And then for the other one I’ll say ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd. I like the structure of the song and the synth, I think it’s a synth, and it’s got some good riffs – we like a strong riff, as you know! I suppose it’s got a bit of a Blossoms vibe. We did a lockdown cover of their ‘If You Think This Is Real Life’. Tom (Tom Ogden, their frontman) is a brilliant songwriter, he’s very good at melodies. Their cover of ‘Paperback Writer’ was amazing.’

If he could tour with anyone, he picks Brighton-based rock duo, Royal Blood, and we chat about how briliant their latest album – Typhoons – is and how incredible it is that two people can make that much noise. His favourite song on the album is ‘Boilermaker’ because of the pounding riffs and massive chorus and he tells me that they’re incredible live. I say that musicians seem to spend as much time checking out each other’s kit at gigs as listening to the actual music and he laughs. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? It’s good to see what other people use and do and nick a few bits!’

(Photo from left to right: George, Luke, Jack and Chay)