The Wainwrights: ‘We’re still trying to find our sound because we’ve got so many different genres that we seem to play across’

Dronfield, North East Derbyshire, teenagers The Wainrights have released a new single ‘Blow Your Socks Off’, a drum-fuelled classic in the making which is impossible not to stomp along to.

They comprise Dan Ash (vocals), Jack Clayton (lead guitar), Jack Simpson (bass), Leo Sillince (keys) and Matt Goodwin (drums). Their band name is a reference to their former drummer, Archie Wainwright. ‘Archie was in the band for a bit and then left around September last year to play cricket in Australia!,’ Ash explained. ‘Matt here was the replacement, but he stuck around.’ They are in the same class at school, other than Goodwin, who is a little younger and have been playing together for a year.

‘Blow Your Socks Off’ is everything you would expect from a track with that title. Underpinned by ferocious, driving drumming from Goodwin and a wall of reverb-drenched guitars to match. ‘I came in and played some chords, expecting it to be a nice, jolly, happy song, but it was not, it didn’t end up that,’ Ash said laughing. ‘We just added more and more stuff to it over time. The song was actually written in a music lesson. We were meant to be doing our music work, but we said to our teacher: “Can we carry on writing this song? We’ve got some good ideas!” And he said: “Yeah, go on then.” We wanted to make the craziest, fastest, most amazing song that just blows your socks off, so that’s why we called it ‘Blow Your Socks Off’!’

Brilliantly, the first guitar you hear on the track is actually drummer Goodwin: ‘The second solo’s me and Dan,’ Clayton said. ‘The first half is me on guitar then Dan continues it into that little jazzy section. When we play live, Leo often plays guitar as well – it makes a big wall of sound!’ I ask Sillence if he also plays guitar on their recordings: ‘I do keyboard and guitar, it just depends on the song. For ‘Blow Your Socks Off’, I was on the synthesizer but on ‘Wasting Time’ and ‘The Miss Hobson song’, I was on guitar for that, except for a little midi trumpet at the end. When we’re live, I switch between my keyboard and my guitar for whatever kind of song we’re doing.’ Clayton is playing a replica of Dave Grohl’s Epiphone DG-335 on the track, although he says that these days, he favours his new Les Paul.

‘We use ‘Blow Your Socks Off’ to open that second set to bring people back in because it’s very high energy, it gets them excited!’

Ash describes the track as being about someone ‘having the worst day possible’: ‘I think eventually, when we were actually recording it, it became more from the perspective of someone trying to perform a song. The goal that they’re having is to just get people dancing and create a big, energetic moment.’ Simpson jumps in: ‘A funny story behind it, though, is that the title, ‘Blow Your Socks Off’, actually came from after a gig. Someone came up to us and we were like, “Oh, what did you think?” And they said: “Oh, it blew my socks off!” Me and Leo thought, we’ve got to turn that into a song! It’s a mid-set song. A lot of the time our sets are split into two sections, so we have a little break in between and we use ‘Blow Your Socks Off’ to open that second set to bring people back in because it’s very high energy, it gets them excited!’

Equally brillantly, it turns out that they wrote the lyrics in detention at school, as Sillence explains: ‘Well, funnily enough, I’d been late loads of times at school and then I had a lateness detention, but I didn’t go to that, so I got an even worse detention (laughs). We’d just been rehearsing it that day and I thought: “Right, let’s get some lyrics down”. We were thinking of ‘Jump’ by Van Halen a little bit.’

‘The Miss Hobson Song’, their previous single that they released last November, hooks you from the cheeky string muting at the start, complete with infectious gang vocals and “na na na’s”, it’s the kind of song that would get the crowd roaring it in unison. It turns out to have been inspired by their former music teacher of the same name, who has since retired. ‘I think it was just me and Leo thinking it would be funny to write a song about her, in a nice way,’ Sillence said. ‘She didn’t find out about ‘The Miss Hobson Song’ until a long time after she left. We thought she’d get annoyed that we’d written a song about her. In reality, she loves it! She’s on the album cover for the song as well, I don’t know if you’ve seen it?’

‘We were really just trying to make the funniest, most entertaining lyrics’

The ‘Unit 2′ in the song is a reference to a unit in their music course called Unit 2: ‘Unit 2’ is essentially music business,’ Simpson explained. ‘In the exam, we are given a brief telling us what to do and this could be anything ranging from ‘create a charity music festival’ to ‘create an independent record label’ and then we have to carry out the research and create a project plan, budget, rationale and a presentation.’ Sillence weighs in: ‘When we first had the idea of Miss Hobson, we thought, let’s link it to what we’re doing,’ he said. That’s where the line “You best get working on that fucking unit 2” comes from. We were really just trying to make the funniest, most entertaining lyrics.’ Simpson is laughing: ‘We were like, “Oh, Miss Hobson goes to the shops and gets us some stuff for tea.” We were just trying to make each other laugh, really.’

Whilst still in secondary school, they all came to music very early and have all been playing their various instruments for five to seven years, although Ash has only recently got into singing.: ‘I just want to say, Matt, as good as he is on drums, he’s infinitely better on piano and guitar,’ said Sillence enthusiastically. ‘He’s a lead guitarist for another band, actually, called Magenta Apricots. Jack Simpson’s in it as well. He plays bass in it.’

They’re currently working on a few songs for which they already have the music and just need to pen some lyrics: ‘Some of them are more like 2000’s indie rock but we’re still trying to find our sound because we’ve got so many different genres that we seem to play across,’ said Ash. Simpson agrees: ‘I feel our new songs are more towards ‘Blow Your Socks Off’, they’re more of them big sounds compared to ‘Miss Hobson’.’

Next up is likely to be ‘Green, Green Goblin’, which is ready to go: ‘We had a little riff from when we first started playing together, even before ‘Wasting Time’,’ Ash said. ‘We went back to it recently and added chords and a whole melody to it. it’s only about three minutes. It’s nice, short and snappy, with energetic power chords. It’s very fast!’

‘It’s quite an angry song really, it has more dark undertones’

Ash describes ‘Green, Green Goblin’ as being born out of an idea to ‘write a song about people who are weird and annoying’: ‘We’ve got a verse that will focus on a person and describe them. The chorus is more of a general “green, green goblin”. We had a little hook that we thought was quite good. It’s just me having a rant, I think!’ Sillence interjects: ‘It’s quite an angry song really, it has more dark undertones as well.’ In what way? ‘The way I interpret it’s about a bit of a womaniser, this green, green goblin who we speak about. He goes out – there’s a lyric that goes “And for an answer he don’t take, for an answer he don’t take no.” It takes a bit of an Arctic Monkeys approach, I’d say, in the realism part of it.’

Collectively, one of their biggest influences is Foo Fighters and it’s easy to hear that influence across their rockier songs with their heavy guitars and raw energy. Sillence is also a fan of the early Stereophonics work. Ash is a big Arctic Monkeys fan, something that his band mates like to gently tease him about: ‘Dan’s obsessed with Arctic Monkeys!,’ Simpson said laughing. ‘It’s not that I don’t like them, just not as much as Dan!’

‘Wasting Time’, which they released as a single last year, channels all of their Foo Fighters energy, with the immortal line “my fucking nan’s always busy”: ‘When we actually released the song, I had to ask my mum not to show it to my nan because I didn’t want her to get angry at me,’ Sillence said. ‘She found out eventually though, although it’s just about the idea of a busy nan and not her. We just wanted to make a crazy funny song. Again, it was just us trying to make each other laugh.’ Ash weighs in: ‘It is really, really funny with the whole Fat Sam’s kebab shop line, that’s a local kebab shop outside school.’ I ask if it’s a good one and they all laugh: ‘Not really, i’s not even the best one in the area,’ Ash said. ‘You could go five minutes up the road and get a better one but it’s just so iconic!’

‘He ran off in a panic but he had a jack lead wrapped around his leg, so all the guitars and amps on the wall came crashing down’

Unexpected adventures are par for the course, too: ‘We’ve had so many funny moments,’ said Ash. ‘There was one time when we went on a radio station around Christmas time. We had a whole day where we were supposed to be in school but we ended up just messing about in the field. We went on a few adventures, we got a Weatherspoon’s breakfast (laughs) and bumped into some students from the college who we knew who are all into drama and ended up in a church with a crooked spire!’ Simpson is laughing: ‘One moment for me that I thought was very funny was when Jack (Clayton) got a nosebleed. He ran off in a panic but he had a jack lead wrapped around his leg, so all the guitars and amps on the wall came crashing down. It made this massive bang (laugh). Then he came back, ran off again, and they all fell off again!’ Ash interjects: ‘The jack lead got crooked in two!’

If they could go out drinking with any musician for a night, Ash is quick to say Liam Gallagher: ‘Because he’s a bit mad and he loved partying. I don’t know what I’d ask him, though. You know what? I’d ask him if he could go on a night out with any musician, dead or alive, who would he go with? I’d love to know his answer to that.’ Simpson picks Bruce Springsteen: ‘I’m a massive fan of his. I love his music and his live shows. I’d probably ask – because he always has about 20 musicians in each song – how he manages to mix all the instruments to sound so good without sounding too messy.’ Sillence wants Kurt Cobain: ‘I’d ask him: “Can I have some drugs?!” I don’t want to end up like him, though. And then I’d put my hand on his shoulder and say: “You don’t need to do this, stay alive”.’

Clayton goes with Ozzy Osbourne: ‘Just to ask how he did all the things he did and stayed alive and also produced the music that he made.’ Goodwin is quick to say Mike Oldfield: ‘I just find him weirdly good (laughs). I think to put some tracks like he does together, you’ve got to be a bit nuts. I’d like to see what’s wrong with him (laughs). I’d like to ask him about playing every instrument on his tracks and how he came to be so good at every instrument, putting all the different tracks together and everything about his songwriting processes.’ Ash jumps back in: ‘I’ve changed my answer! I’ve decided Michael Jackson just because he was a recluse. He could not get a normal life and I want to know how that changed his psychology.’

They leave me with one briliant bit of advice that Miss Hobson gave them: ‘She wrote it on the wall,’ Simpson said, getting up to show it to me. ‘Here it is, she wrote: “Music is more than just the notes”, it’s good, isn’t it? While I’m showing you around, this is our wall and our section,’ he said, showing me a group photo. That’s Miss Hobson. That’s Michael Taylor, he’s a legend as well. He’s a new (music) teacher. Miss Hobson came to our gig last year at Christmas Eve, so it was really nice to see her again there and play that song for her.’