British band The Vamps consisting of singer Bradley Will Simpson, guitarist James McVey, drummer Tristan Evans and bassist Connor Ball, rose to fame after uploading a series of covers onto YouTube. Their fan base grew even further when they toured with McFly earlier this year and only last weekend they supported Selena Gomez in London.
Whilst the lads are currently busy promoting the release of their debut EP ‘Can We Dance’ which is out September 29th, they still managed to find time to chat to us.
We discussed the upcoming EP, their dedicated fans, wanting to tour with Miley Cyrus and all their plans for next year!
HTF: Hey guys! How are you all? How’s your summer been?
Bradley: We’re very good thanks! And summer has been really really good thanks!
HTF: You supported Selena Gomez at Hammersmith last weekend, how was that?!
James: It was amazing! Really really good fun! It was such a great opportunity to play at such an iconic music venue.
Bradley: And Selena was lovely!
HTF: You guys also recently performed at a few festivals this summer, including Fusion and Sundown, and later in September you guys are playing at SD2 – do you prefer playing festivals over normal gigs?
Tristan: They’re both different. Most festivals and summer shows are quite rushed, you don’t really have time to sound check so you just go on, which is cool for the adrenaline, but we all personally like a good sound check and prefer to take time to get our sound right before playing a show. So the McFly tour earlier this year was perfect because we had a sound check and it was awesome!
HTF: So does that mean you guys enjoy life on the road?
Tristan: Yeah! We love it! It’s awesome to just travel and listen to your iPod for half the day.
Bradley: It’s nice to travel the UK and see so many different places.
HTF: Do you not miss home though?
Tristan: Well we miss our own bed! And of course we miss our family and friends!
Bradley: And our cat!
HTF: The EP is out on the 29th September are you looking forward to releasing it?
Connor: We’re really looking forward to it! It’s going to be exciting to get all our stuff out there so people can actually get to hear it! It’s going to be cool!
HTF: And it’s currently available to pre-order, what’s the fans reaction been like towards it and the lead single ‘Can We Dance’ so far?
Bradley: It’s been really good thanks! We’ve been very lucky that our fans are promoting it around!
HTF: Yes you definitely have a large and dedicated fan base behind you, as they’ve been pre-ordering it like crazy! We saw the video when you guys caused a bit of chaos when performing at London’s Westfield last month, what’s the craziest thing a fan has ever done ?
Connor: They chase vans, bang on windows, open moving doors, it’s pretty scary!
HTF: They’ve also helped the music video for ‘Can We Dance’ achieve over 1.5 million views!
Tristan: Yes! It’s incredible, we’ve got very nice fans!
HTF: Speaking about the music video, it revolves around clearing up after a wild party from the night before – was that based on personal experience or where did the idea for the video come from?
Bradley: Well it’s a really fun and youthful song, and we kind of wanted to encapsulate that in the video. The house party idea was something that we all really wanted to do. So from day one, as soon as we knew ‘Can We Dance’ was going to be the first single we definitely wanted a house party style video to go with it! And we’re very happy with how it turned out!
HTF: It seems like a fun video, what was it like to film?
Bradley: It was really fun! It was a long day, took about 22 hours to film, but we loved it! It’s the first song where we’ve ever done anything like that, so it was good!
HTF: Now you guys are all young and you started out by uploading covers on YouTube, was music something you guys always wanted to do?
Tristan: We’re actually all 35-40, so don’t let the baby faces fool you! Ha! But no, we’ve all played music from an early age, so it’s kind of been natural to go into a music career. We’re very lucky and very humbled about what we’re doing these days, but it’s always been what we’ve wanted to do!
HTF: Well we’re glad you guys chose music! Now the EP includes the new single ‘Can We Dance’ and then 3 covers: ‘Year 3000’, ‘MMMBop’ and ‘Teenage Kicks’, which interestingly are all tracks originally by boy bands – what was the reason for choosing those particular 3 songs?
Bradley: We wanted to pick songs that aren’t necessarily current at the moment, and we kind of wanted to take something and put our own twist on it. It’s a coincidence that they’re all by boy bands, as they’re just three songs that we really really love!
HTF: A track which seems to be very popular with fans is ‘Wildheart’ – can we expect that to be released sometime soon?
Connor: Well it may be coming up on the album! Whether we release it before as a single we don’t know yet!
HTF: So there’s going to be an album! What details can you reveal about it?
Connor: It should be out the first half of next year, April 2014 possibly! But we currently don’t have a name for it yet.
HTF: Musically what can we expect from it?
Connor: Well there’s many tunes, they’re all acoustic guitar music with a pop melody, but they’re all different in their own way. The album’s definitely something to look forward to, we can’t wait! We don’t know how it will go down with fans, but hopefully it will be great!
HTF: We’re sure your fans will love it! On the McFly tour we loved your cover of ‘Cecilia’ so we’re really disappointed that wasn’t on the EP!
Bradley: Well it should be on the album, I guess you’ll have to wait and see!
HTF: How exciting! Now you’ve supported some big names already – McFly and Selena Gomez – is there anyone else you would like to tour or collaborate with?
Tristan: Someone like Miley Cyrus would be cool to tour with, we think that would be fun!
HTF: Interesting, as we saw you’re recent song uploaded to YouTube was a cover of Miley’s ‘We Can’t Stop’!
Tristan: Yeah it’s an awesome song, so to tour with her would be fun!
HTF: Are there any plans to break into the international charts?
Tristan: Oh yeah we would definitely love to! We’re going to LA in October and then we’ll hopefully travel to Europe a bit. It would be cool to go overseas, but we’ll wait and see!
HTF: So what’s in the pipeline for you guys for the rest of 2013 and looking forward to 2014?
Tristan: We’ll hopefully release our new single in the next coming months, and then the album in the first half of next year! And hopefully we’ll be heading out on a tour soon in the next six to eight months! But that’s as much as we know for now!
HTF: Well thank you very much for taking the time to chat to us, all the best with everything, is there any final message you’d like to say to your fans?
The Vamps: We love you guys and hopefully one day we will meet all of you! And if you haven’t pre-ordered already then don’t forget to get the EP on the 29th September!
Check out The Vamps’ music video for ‘Can We Dance’ below and you can pre-order their EP here!
Interviewer: Sophie Sinclair.
