NEW EP ‘ WEEKEND MILLIONAIRE ‘ OUT NOW
1.Who are ‘ The Clause ’
We’re four best mates who’ve grown up in a band with each other since our school days. Hailing from the UK’s second city, Birmingham and trying to take over the world. Consisting of myself, Pearce Macca (lead singer), Liam Deakin (lead guitarist), Jonny Fyffe (Bassist & Niall Fennell (Drummer).
2. For someone that is yet to discover you, how would you describe your music?
The best thing you’ve never heard.
3. What inspired you as an artist?
Collectively our formative years of
4. What is your process for preparing to perform live? Do you have any Diva demands?
Haha, not at all. A multipack of crisps and a few beers on the rider does us just fine. As we’ve matured into touring, a few moments of peace before going on stage and taking the roof off is very welcomed, as boring as that sounds.
5. Where do you feel you fit into the music ?
The purpose of this band has always been to bring the noise and the party. Our philosophy is built on finding the good in all the bad around us and converting that into music that makes people feel alive. We’ve always set out to be a band that makes you want to lose your mind and get up off your feet but can also just as easily bring a tear to your eye through the emotion in our tunes. We speak to people through our own experiences because at the end of the day, we’re just like everybody else down in the pit singing back at us.
6: What are your favourite musical genres, and are there any you dislike?
We’ve got such a range of favourite genres in the band it’s hard to name them all. Our foundations are built on indie & rock, that’s the music that we were all brought up on and in turn inspired us to pick up our guitars. Funnily, we’re all massive fans of Disco, Funk & Soul; genres that drove music through the 70s & 80s. We’ve let a lot of those influences bleed into our sound over the years to create what you hear on record, we’re at mercy to anything that makes you want to get up and have a dance. Apart from that we love music from the New Romantics era and have our own guilty pleasures in Pop, RnB & Hip-Hop. Don’t wanna say we hate any genre of music, every genre of music has stuff to offer, but the whole Drill scene just isn’t for us, I don’t get it. I think they’d say the exact same about us anyway hahaha.
7. Is there a story behind the new EP ’WEEKEND MILLIONAIRE’ ?
The EP is a tale of my experiences & struggles whilst trying to find my feet in the world during my adolescent and post teen years. Capturing moments when I feel like I’m falling short and chasing dreams that aren’t coming true. It’s about realising there is beauty in your failures, so get rid of your own self-expectations, live for the moment because none of these headaches matter. It’s a journey everyone goes on and we’re all living it.
8. What would you say is your greatest strength as an artist?
Our greatest strength is us four and the bond we’ve got with each other. We’ve grown up through school & our adolescence together with the goal of taking on the world and making it. It’s a for better or worse kind of thing …
9. What Would You Say 1s Your Greatest Weakness As An Artist?
I wouldn’t say it’s a weakness because it’s our greatest pride, but we started this band with the purpose of putting our hometown Birmingham back on the map in the music industry. It’s a city that has bred some of the country’s best talent over the last couple of decades but never gets the recognition it deserves. Recent indie bands like PEACE & Jaws all the way back to Sabbath & ELO, there’s so many great names but Birmingham doesn’t quite have the same standing that places like Manchester or Liverpool has for birthing it’s icons. Brum can be susceptible to bad press and there’s almost a negative nationwide stereotype of our city, but at its heart is a place full of the best people who take pride in our culture, multiculturalism & the talent that is bred here. We want people to see it in the way we do.
10. What can fans expect from your new EP ‘ WEEKEND MILLIONAIRE’
17 minutes and 29 seconds of pure euphoria hahaha. It’s a ride that will take you through a million emotions. We poured our hearts into this EP, it’s our final step of evolution before our debut album. It’s an EP for everyone who’s experienced the same things we have.
11. What music artist would you say have influenced your work?
It’s hard to put my finger on one artist because so many are responsible for how our sound has shaped over the years. If I was going to single out one based on this EP it’d probably be The Killers. We hold massive admiration for their ability to mix guitars with synths to make anthem after anthem and we’ve really tried to channel that into this EP.
12. Who would you most like to collaborate with artistically?
Jungle without a doubt, really into them at the moment and love what they’ve added to the Blossoms album stylistically.
13. What was your worst performance?
Hands down, Isle Of Wight Festival 2019. One of the first times we played the festival and it was an absolute nightmare hahaha. For a couple of teenagers to be given a licence to get on a ferry over to a major festival and play your music is an exciting thing and that excitement was taken a bit too far. Gonna be pointing fingers at our bassist Jonny here, who’s at the heart of most of these kinds of stories. For some reason he’d just discovered Red Wine and thought it made him look cool or whatever. It’s a long journey from Birmingham to Isle Of Wight & his big day out probably started a little too early. We set off from Birmingham at around 6am and weren’t on stage until 9pm so by the time that rolled around Jonny was a bit merry shall we say. He gets up on stage in front of a full tent, before a note has been played he fell into the bit between barrier and stage after trying to stand on his monitor. Then in an attempt to scramble back onto the stage he pulled my guitar leads out and lost his own mic stand. We had to play the first song without backing vocals or a rhythm guitar and it just went downhill from there. Looking back on it it’s one of our favourite stories but believe me he got a wrap around the knuckles backstage. What can I say though, that’s what happens when you let 18 year olds loose on a big day out. I think he learnt his lesson from that one.
14: What was the most difficult obstacle you have ever faced and how did you overcome it?
Hate bringing that time up but probably COVID. We just got signed a couple weeks before everything locked down and everything was falling into place for us. Then the world turned on its head and the label we were with folded, we couldn’t gig or do what we loved for years, it was a really tough time for us in honesty. Not being able to go out and do what we loved was a killer. The thing that kept us together though was our bond between the four of us and our passion for making our dreams come true, so we picked ourselves up and started again when the world opened up again. Looking back it’s probably the best thing that happened to the band because it’s made us who we are today.
15: What is your creative process when making music. Do you work with others or is there just you?
It’s all in house for us. A couple of years back I converted my shed into a little music den and that’s where most of our songs get written. The ideas created in there get taken to our practice room and that’s where we shape the songs into what they are on record. Lyrically everything comes from my heart and my experiences & struggles growing up with the boys. We’re not opposed to working with others, it’s something we’d love to do in the future but it’s always been our opinion that our debut album should come from us and no one else. We want to put our own organic marker down and lay our cards on the table so we can say ‘this is The Clause’.
16: Where do you see your musical career in 10 years?
We want to be headlining festivals and playing arenas across the world, plain and simple. That’s always been our mission to be as big as we possibly can. If you’re an artist and you love music but don’t strive for that then what is the point. Everyone dreams of headlining Glastonbury.
17: The UK seems to have gone in to melt down regarding the Oasis Reunion, are you bothered by It?
Oasis were one of the reasons we started this band. The cultural significance they hold on this island is mental & it still exists so long after they previously called it a day so I think they’ve earned the meltdown that’s happening at the minute. As a music fan I would’ve hoped the landscape of guitar music would have evolved more since their era but no one has come to replace them and the impact they had on British music and culture. Personally, I think it’s massive for guitar music, it’s got the industry focusing on rock & indie again, you only have to look at the amount of people who tried to get tickets to see that our genre is a sleeping giant ready to take over again. I think this reunion is going to build on the momentum that artists like Sam Fender have given indie music over the last couple of years and put Rock & Indie back to their rightful place in popular culture. We’ve all got our tickets (even if it did put a hole in my bank account).
18:Your Top 3 Overrated Musicians, who when you hear them you think ‘ How The Fk………….. ?
Haha, a very PR trained sounding answer but none that we can think of, music is a weird one and completely subjective, one persons on repeat is another persons skip!
