Goodluck Jonathan are a collective of four very different individuals gelled together by a mutual love, and serious appreciation, of music and a less serious though equally passionate love of rum, mocking the percussion section, and annoying the Nigerian President by misdirecting his Twitter traffic to their profile. We caught up with them to enquire about the name, amongst other things.
1. How long has the band been together and how did you all meet?
3 of us have been mates for years, we met Sam (drummer) when we moved to Brighton, started the band the rest is philosophy…
2. Where did you get your name from & what does it mean?
We’re named after the Nigerian president. He’s called Goodluck and his wife is called Patience, such a chiller. He also stands for change he’s come in to do away with corruption and is adamant to run things his own way. He has the respect of the youth and captures their hopes of the future….not something we can say we feel in our own country. Oh yeah and he’s a fan of what we do – respect is mutual.
3. Describe your sound for us & who would you say were your biggest musical influences?
When it comes to writing we don’t really listen to other music we generally come up with a title or an idea and the rest just happens. Everything follows each other there’s no point playing balls to the wall double kick if Nick’s crooning about trying to get laid. Not that he’d ever do that……. In terms of our sound we always feel that you need contrast, whether that comes out in one song or as a whole piece there must always be tension, it allows us to explore more too.
4. And what about non-musical influences?
David Lynch. Books. Anything that’s a more interesting wealth of experience than Wikipedia… To be fair there is some really interesting undertones to what is going on around us at the moment, never has a student come out of education to instantly become a second class citizen, never has there been more of a lack of respect for power and hilariously the old blokes don’t seem to be able to see past their own arrogance and greed to notice it, when there’s something like this going on around you, you can’t help but draw on it. ‘Futures Got No Love For Us’ is a calling card to let others know that were not going along with the way things are if anyone wants to join.
5. Music can be a fickle mistress, what is your biggest high & low as a band so far?
The high points come when we get it right, we’ve always been very honest with ourselves, we got picked up very early on in our career and promised we would always develop so it’s very rewarding when we can sit back and be like ‘yeh, that’s the one’. Low points are few and far between, we’ve just been through a line-up change, slimming down to a 4 piece is never easy – like a boxer cutting weight before a fight….but out of that we have grown so much and can’t wait to show you our new viiiiibe.
6. What one fact about the band do you most want to share with the world?
That we’re not going anywhere, this is what we do. The live scene will prevail.
7. The old model of record demo-do gigs-get signed-make millions is pretty broken these days, what’s your plan to deal with this?
Sit back and laugh??? It’s very amusing watching labels trying to create audiences. We are going to keep on doing what we are doing to the best of our ability, how can we lose if we’re playing our own game… ? We don’t play for promoters, we don’t often play at standard venues, we even played bad boys for life at our last gig…if we were hoping some fella who sits behind a desk is gonna come along and wave millions at us I don’t think we’d be able to do the things we want to do to make our gigs a full experience.
Goodluck Jonathan – The Futures Got No Love For Us by Cannonball_PR
8. We journalists like to use easy labels to describe bands, what’s the worst thing you’ve seen yourselves described as?
Four shipwrecked castaways and a backstreet boy. Still don’t know who the backstreet boy was.
9. We’re loving what you do but who’s floating your boat right now?
We only really listen to our mates bands but there is some good stuff out there if you look hard …You Cry Wolf, Panama, Clutchy Hopkins, Baths, David Lynch
10. What’s up next for you guys?
We’ve got a new single out on 28th November, called ‘The Future’s Got No Love For Us’ (embedded above). It’s great to be releasing something new and I think we all feel very proud of it. It’s definitely a progression on our earlier work. We’ve also reworked it for a live session with a really talented MCcalled Iron Braydz, which will also be available soon. Set your homepage to bygoodluckjonathan.tumblr.com and you won’t miss it x
