Interview With Larry: Wrexham: February 20th, 2006

Hundred Reasons are proud to announce details of two UK headline tours in the next few months. They coincide with the release of their brand new single ‘Kill Your Own’ out on March 6th and their eagerly awaited forthcoming third album of the same name out on March 20th through V2 Records

‘KILL YOUR OWN’ is Hundred Reasons first album for V2 Records, and sees them unleash their frustrations of the past twelve months with a hard-hitting, angry, full-on rock record; although in true Hundred Reasons style they’re not afraid to show their softer side; and whilst the album is at times antagonistic it also has moments that are gentle, positive and up-lifting. Guitarist Larry Hibbitt produced the album at Kore Studios, London with famed producer Dave Sardy (Oasis, Rolling Stones and previous Hundred Reasons album) completing the mixing with Hibbitt in LA.

Previews of a few tracks from KILL YOUR OWN have been made available for download exclusively through the band’s site. They include the forthcoming title track single, the demos of This Mess and No Pretending as well as last year’s Singles Club 3 track Feed The Fire given to all fans who were lucky enough to get tickets for the band’s December Barfly gigs. On top of all that, mp3s of live favorites I’ll Find You, What You Get, Answers, Oratorio, Silver, Falter, and If I Could are also available as free downloads. Check out the bands website: www.hundredreasons.com

So I sit down with Larry, he is slightly concerned about the tin roof of the venue, but we assure him it sounds ‘Fuckin’ Great’ out-front, he seems a happier chap. “Things are looking so much better than a year ago,” he explains, “2005 was spent writing this record and sorting out the deal we have with V2. We are starting off on a good foot this year, with a great single and a tour that is selling really well in decent venues. 2005 was not a ‘nightmare’ year, more of a ‘nothing’ year, where we were stuck in limbo, not really doing that much, although writing is important, there seemed to be a lot of spare time… The priority was to keep working on the new album, because we knew we needed to make a great record, and that’s what we did.”

I ask him if he feels it made them a better band? “Better is perhaps not the word, ‘closer’ certainly is, both as people and professionally, having to club together again, like in the early days, we never spoke of splitting up or anything, we just got on with it. Many people speculated about what would happen with the band, even talking about us putting out our own records, but that was never on the table, we are not a ‘Do-It-Yourself’ band really. If you have the opportunity to be on a label with their full support, I would certainly recommend it, you need to be able to release your records worldwide, not just in the UK, of course home soil matters, but there is the bigger picture to consider. V2 are the biggest ‘Indie’ label in the UK, and it feels that way when you go in to see them, they have a major pedigree, yet are so down to earth; no attitude, it’s very open; they want to talk about music to you, the sound, the video, not territories. It’s not nameless and faceless, you see the same people, so it builds, and from the first moment we sat down with them, they wanted to hear demos. It was not about the contract, not marketing, or perception, ‘just let’s hear some songs’, their priority was the same as ours - make a great album.”

I tell Larry that the new album sounds different, he explains why: “I produced it, no outside interference, not that there was much on the first two albums, but we felt totally in control. We recorded in London, which was great; it was very organic; all the engineers, the drum techs etc were all friends, so it was very comfortable to record. For the band it was the easiest record we have done, there was no worries on the playing front, it was not so regimented, quite loose and easy, we were there a lot, but we got a lot done.”

A marked difference then from last time round, for me this new record sounds like the album that should have followed the debut. Larry, to a point, agrees, “The second album was such a strange experience. Sony Music, our previous label, sacked everyone that had worked on our first record, alongside bringing in a new MD, so we knew no one at the label at all! Columbia Records essentially ceased to exist, the label just wanted an album, and they sent us to New York to record. But they went through the motions, it seemed like they did not care how well it did, they knew that they could just put it out, make 60-70,000 sales and that would give them there money back. They seemed to be washing their hands of both the album and/or us, or at least that’s how it felt. I don’t remember them hearing any demos, they sent us off to record it, we delivered, they put it in the stores, end of story.”

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I inform Larry that listening to the new material, they sound like a band once again stretching themselves. “That’s so true…” he agrees, and also you always had had a strong live following… “Yeah, live has always been our thing, being good live has always been more of a priority than what we do on record. When we rehearse and we write, the set-up in the rehearsal room is like a live gig, everything we do is geared around that set-up. We have never written in a studio, or on a computer, we just try to capture something, there has never been a single song that just one person has written at home. Someone will kick off an idea, drum, vocal line, guitar riff, whatever, and everyone else just joins in until you have something worth working on. It may be a 10 minute blues jam, but you often get a killer riff, you often enjoy the result more than the process.”

I ask if that is also true of producing. “Fucking yes!” comes back the answer. “I thought it was going to be stressful, but it was about ten times worse; you feel like you have bitten off more than you can chew; you have to remain so focused on the end product and put out of you mind that not only do you know the band, but you are also fucking in it. Enjoying it is not the way I would sum it up, needing to, is the words I would use, having to, are the words in the future, because I could not now let someone else produce the band. It would be a nightmare if another producer came in now, I’d just be an arsehole to be honest. I don’t think I could handle being told I was wrong now.”

The rest of the year seems to be shaping up with one word, TOURING, “We have this tour in the UK now, and another in April, and in-between in March we hope to hit mainland Europe. We also want to do more overseas, which we have not done as Sony did not put our records out anywhere else, apart from Japan, naturally, parent company and all that, and the cliché is true, we are quite big in Japan. So we want to go back soon as. Last week I was over in Paris and Berlin doing media stuff, V2 want to push us everywhere, in some ways not gong out before might be a good thing, we could have been proper fucked up had the 2nd album been pushed and then we changed label. In a lot of these countries we are a new band, which is brilliant in a way, we have a clean slate, especially in America. This is essentially our debut album for the rest of the world, anyone seeing the band for the first time, hearing the new record will discover loads of other songs they did not know, which will give us strength in depth. We also have the licenses for both our previous records in America, we can release them however we choose.”

I then chat to Larry about his influences. “Appetite 4 Destruction by Guns n’ Roses.” He comes back straight off the bat, “It is year zero for me, before that I grew up listening to a lot of classical music, but when I hard Guns I was just blown away. I moved then into the whole 90’s Seattle scene, then I just became more and more interested in doing it myself; it just took over; the sheer wanting to be in a band, and that takes so much time away from listening to other artists. Now I listen but I’m not sure if I really hear them, because all the time I’m thinking about what Hundred Reasons are either doing, done, about to do, planning to do, where we are, where we’ve been and where we are going. It’s very all encompassing being in a band, you tend to switch off from the outside, but you also are switched in, makes no sense, but in 2006 I’m enjoying being in this band, listening to this band and playing with this band.”

You can’t argue with that, and while there may be 99 reasons not to buy their record or to see them live, there are 99 to do the opposite. But there is only one reason to check out Hundred Reasons - they Rock!

APRIL: UK Tour Dates:

1 Nottingham Rock City

2 Edinburgh Venue

3 Manchester Academy

4 Birmingham Academy

6 London Scala

7 Oxford Zodiac

8 Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms

9 Exeter Phoenix

Jj – 2006.