The Not Nows: ‘I’m singing that I could be the next best thing but of a sinking ship or something along those lines!’

The Not Nows, a pop punk band consisting of Rob Prince and Donnie Dell, one-half hailing from the U.K. and the other from the U.S., is gearing up to release its debut 17-track album, Cheap Remakes, Imposters and Knock-Offs.

Singer and songwriter Rob Prince played in punk and ska bands in the 2000’s and 2010’s before hanging up his guitar. Ten years later, after a brief foray into social media parody covers, The Not Nows have emerged to channel 20 years of unrecorded punk rock and ska music. Prince and drummer Dell met on Reddit: ‘Donny reached out to me saying that he’d heard a couple of my songs and he’d really like to get involved and then it snowballed from there,’ Prince said. ‘We had similar interests, he’s in Pittsburgh and I’m in Birmingham but we message every couple of days and just push each other on.’ Of their band name, Prince says: ”Not Now’ is my favourite track by Blink-182. The other reason I picked it was around that whole idea of needing to pull my finger out and record these 70, 80 songs before I run out. It’s always “not now” with me (laughs), I’ll start loads of things and never see them through, so this is me thinking I should try and see it through for a change!’

Last month (June), they released their tongue-in-cheek single ‘Life’s Too Short To Dance With Tall People’, a joyous ska track peppered with brass fills that makes you want to get up and dance: ‘This song was from one of my old bands called Alex Kidd, named after the old Sega Master System game,’ he said. ‘It was written in my mid-20s around the time that I was just getting a bit bored of the local club and rock scenes. I’m singing that I could be the next best thing but of a sinking ship or something along those lines (laughs) and that I probably feel old before my time. I definitely feel the same now, I’m pushing 40 but I feel like I’m not. It was just a silly song title, there’s no meaning behind that, although I’m not the tallest!’

As the track kicks off: “I could be the next big thing. The second best dressed drinker on this sinking ship. I think I’ve got not business being in on a night like this.”

‘They give it that extra kick, they lift it up a level, don’t they?’

Prince started playing in pop punk and punk rock bands when he was 18, before moving into ska for a while, deeming the brass fills ‘magic’: ‘They give it that extra kick, they lift it up a level, don’t they? I don’t know that I’d put them over the current punk rock songs I’m doing because I’ve written a 17 track rock album, although there might be one ska track thrown in there but I would consider getting some brass. I do still speak to the brass section from my old band as well because they’re more local to me in Birmingham and the Midlands. In fact, one of them messaged me just a couple of weeks ago, jokingly hinting at a reunion of our old band but I think we’re all doing different things now – our drummer’s in Canada for a start and he was originally in Birmingham, so that’s a challenge in itself!’

As a child, he says he didn’t ‘pick music up much at all’ but his mum was musical, playing both the flute and the recorder: ‘I was never really pushed to go and do any kind of music lessons, I never had any guitar lessons,’ he said. ‘I was around 16 and my best friend in school was in a punk band and kept trying to get me to be their singer (laughs). I don’t know why they asked me to do that because I don’t know that they’d heard me sing. I think they just probably found me funny and that was about it!’ He eventually acquiesced when their bassist left and he filled in, teaching himself both bass and guitar ‘like a lot of people in punk bands’: ‘We weren’t hardcore punk at all, although we probably thought we were (laughs). You could hear our influences of Blink-182 and Green Day, so it was much more along the pop-punk genre.’

Prior to that, he describes himself as ‘a very basic kid, I think, I wasn’t really into rock, I was just generally into pop’: ‘Thinking back to some of the albums I had when I was younger, they’re quite embarrassing (laughs). I had the Will Smith album, Big Willie Style, and some Toploader, which is a bit rocky. My first album though was The Offspring and and my first single was Eminem, ‘My Name Is’ (1999). I generally just listened to anything and everything when I was young, it was only around my teenage years, that age when you start to find something to fit in with, that I got into punk.’

‘I always imagine it as a little bit of a mix between a Blink-182 song and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme!’

‘Another Cigarette’, which they released as a single in April, is a heartfelt love song where he hopes that the woman in question’s shoe or car will break so that she has to stay another day: ‘I need to try and remember the lyrics to that one now, I should know that off the top of my head, shouldn’t I?,’ he said laughing. ‘I’m terrible with lyrics, I remember bits but if I don’t write it down, I forget them! It’s a recent one, I always imagine it as a little bit of a mix between a Blink-182 song and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme! The chorus itself was previously in one of the songs in that ska band as well: “Go on, have another cigarette, if you can’t live without it, go on have another shot on me, if you really need it.” It’s about a friend or someone close that perhaps needs to self-medicate; sometimes you do what you need to do to get by.’

As the track goes: “I don’t know what I could say. To make you stay the night or stay another day. Maybe your heating will break. Maybe your car will break down. Maybe I’ll find another way to keep you sticking around.”

Next up will be their single ‘Including Dawn’, which will feature singer James Pendle from U.K. ska band, Stankfinger and which will be released later this summer: ‘This was a song written originally when I was about 18. It started off as a little acoustic song in my very first pop punk band, then it turned into a ska song in my ska band before it became more of a poppy punk rock track now in this band. It’s one of those ones that I just can never let go of, I’m always tweaking it slightly but it’s one that I enjoy. I would say it’s got more of a NOFX/Offspring sound. It’s got a driving drum beat and guitars, it’s a very catchy, fun, bouncy one, very sing-alongey! I always come back to punk rock, whenever I’m listening in my car or wherever, I always end up putting on a bit of Sum 41, or NOFX or Bad Religion, or another one of my favourite bands. I love a catchy song and that’s what this one is!’

Prince had told me prior to our chat that he had recently lost a lot of recordings, so I ask him if he has managed to recover any of them:’ Since then, it’s got worse,’ he admitted. ‘I thought I’d lost stuff dating back to February but I found out just yesterday that I’ve lost stuff going back to June last year, so I’ve lost a year’s worth of recordings. I was at my wit’s end yesterday messaging Donny. I’ve had numerous nights over the last year of going in my studio when everyone else in the house is asleep and being up there until one or two in the morning, all of those nights of me doing that are just lost.’

‘I will do 30 vocal takes and then I’ll go through and pick my favourite ones and cut and splice each one that I like the most’

I ask him if Dell has any copies they can work off and he shakes his head: ‘He’s got the demo tracks I sent him but I’m terrible for double tracking, I will do 30 vocal takes and then I’ll go through and pick my favourite ones and cut and splice each one that I like the most. The ones that I’ve sent to him are just a mishmash of 30 vocal takes, 15 guitar takes, so he’s got some tracks but nothing that we can really recover, so I was back in my studio last night until one in the morning thinking: “Right, plow on, just get through it” and Donny was messaging me saying “Go on, you’ve just got to make the effort and get back up in there and we’ll get it over the line at some point”. The bit that bothered me the most was the singing because I booked a week off work to go and do the singing because obviously I can’t do that in the middle of the night when I’ve got kids sleeping. I’ll do it again, it’ll come good eventually.’

He and Dell clearly have a close relationship despite the geographical distance yet it turns out that they’ve never actually been in the same room together: ‘I lost my dad in 2020 and then he lost his last year, so there was a bit of messaging and bonding over things like that as well, we definitely do get along really well. We both have had things in our personal life that have affected us and it’s happened to each of us even though we’re in different countries.’

Prince underplays his musical talents, describing himself as a ‘five out of ten singer, five out of ten guitarist’: ‘I think I can write a catchy song and that’s what I tend to do with my music,’ he said animatedly. ‘Sometimes, a random thought will pop in my head of a particular lyric that I like the sound of or a random melody. A lot of the time though, I will sit down with my acoustic, and start playing and coming up with different ideas. Sometimes I get in a bit of a flow, I’ll just keep writing and writing, and even to this day, I’ve probably got 200 sound recordings in my phone, just of different song ideas – I’m never going to catch up!’

‘It’s a very slow, acoustic-ey song, I should put it on an acoustic-ey album when I get around to it!’

Some notes have been inspired by particularly poignant moments, as he recounts: ‘There’s one that I wrote a few years ago when my daughter was born, when you’re very teary and emotional, probably from the lack of sleep (laughs). I wrote down the note to say “If this is all there is, and it was me singing a very sombre song about it, if this is all there is, then I’m fine with it.” If nothing else happens in my life, I’m fine with that because I’ve had children and that love overcomes you. I know when I think back to that song from seven years ago now, I just scroll back to my sound recordings and look for the one with that name, it’s a very slow, acoustic-ey song, I should put it on an acoustic-ey album when I get around to it!’

Having stopped recording music for a decade, Prince is clearly relishing being back in the thick of it: ‘I was definitely missing it, I don’t think there was a single thing that happened, or a moment in my life that made me think I now need to get back and do it, but I just really missed it,’ he said. ‘I missed recording and playing songs. I still, to this day, miss being in a proper band gigging and that camaraderie that you have with your band mates. Marriage, work, children, all those things got in the way. I definitely felt a bit of a fear of missing out, of not wanting to get to 50 or 60 with all these songs in me and not doing anything with them. I don’t have any aspirations for them becoming number one hits or getting massively popular (laughs) but if I do them and throw them out there and if a few people like them, I’ll be happy. I started to get more and more of a feeling that I needed to start recording some songs before I completely forget how to play them and forget how to sing them.’

If money were no object, Prince would go for a top end Telecaster guitar: ‘I love Telecasters, I love the feel of a Telecaster, the neck feels quite thin. I’ve got a Fender Telecaster, that I bought a few months back but if I could, I would probably just go for a ridiculously expensive £5,000 to £6,000 Telecaster – I don’t even know which ones go for that price, but that’s what I’d go for! In a bright funky colour, a red or a pink.’

‘Our drummer, who at the time was a policeman, was stood up and getting in his face, telling him to back off’

If he could go out drinking with any musician, he is quick to say Fat Mike from NOFX: ‘Simply because they are my favourite band. Actually, my favourite band is always either NOFX or Blink-182, and probably changes depending on the year. The question I would ask him is: “When are you going to write some more poppy, sing-along NOFX albums, like the ones 15 years ago?!”‘

Prince has had some hilarious moments gigging with former bands, as he recounts: ‘I remember us playing a gig at a pub near to us for someone’s birthday. We were on a bit of a high because we’d just been booked for one of the Carling Academy slots. A couple of people in the pub that maybe didn’t know there was a gig night on came up to us and said we needed to turn down, it was too loud for the locals. I don’t think we did turn down (laughs) but played another song. They came back and then it escalated and resulted in us getting thrown out! I remember one of the guys, this big stocky bald man, came up to our bassist and punched him in the back of the head, shouting something about how we thought we were the “Billy Big Bollocks” talking about our slot at the Carling Academy, it was a funny gig!’ I ask if his bassist was ok. ‘I don’t think it was too bad because he didn’t go down, and then our drummer, who at the time was a policeman, was stood up and getting in his face, telling him to back off, so I stayed out of it!’