Haven Interview

They come from deepest, darkest Cornwall and, as the story goes Nat met Gary in a record store in Penzance. They started writing together and soon after found bassist Iwan Gronow and drummer Jack Mitchell to complete the line-up. With the 160,000 selling debut album 'Between The Senses' behind them, Music News managed to grab some time and ask about their soon to be released follow-up 'All For A Reason'.

Gary Briggs - Vocals
Nat Wason - Guitar
Iwan Gronow - Bass
Jack Mitchell â€“ Drums

M-N: Let's get all The Smiths questions out of the way now. Your manager Joe Moss was the former manager of The Smiths and Johnny Marr co-produced the album was this a coincidence?

Gary: Joe Moss was holidaying in St. Just where we lived at the time. A friend of his who relocated from Manchester was also living in St. Just and mentioned that there was this band he should take a look at. He was a bit reluctant at the time, as he was looking after Marion and dealing with a singer with a heroine addiction that was slowly destroying the band.
Nat: I don't think he thought that much of us either did he?
Gary: He's so passionate about music though, we just hit it off straight away.

M-N: Is there a big music scene in Cornwall?

Nat: Not really, although it worked to our advantage that we were crafting songs away from any outside influences, none of us even listened to the radio. We just locked ourselves away in a caravan writing music. But eventually you reach a time where you have to surround yourself with like-minded people. Being in a band was not a feasible way of life in Cornwall so we looked about and Manchester seemed like the place we could make a living out of it.

M-N: The decision had no baring on The Smiths connections then?

Gary: We didn't know Johnny then, basically we went on a wing and a prayer really. A friend of ours is a well known sculptor making things out of junk. Manchester council commissioned him to attach this sculpture of a horn to the side of this building in the heart of the Northern quarter. They paid for his accommodation for three weeks and he finished in two, so it seemed like the ideal opportunity. Next day we chucked all that mattered into a van, drove up north and have been there ever since.

M-N: You managed to get some great support slots.

Gary: Yeah, we dropped really lucky. We were rehearsing night and day and a mate of ours turned up with Damon Gough (Badly Drawn Boy). We were a bit weirded out by it at first but he just sat there and heard us play ‘Till The End' which we'd just recorded and he loved it. A couple of days later he phoned up and asked if we wanted to go on tour with him. We didn't even have a record or publishing deal.

M-N: Johnny Marr again produced the album, how did that go?

Gary: When we recorded ‘Between The Senses' we all finished the sessions feeling really good. I never really thought of myself as a guitarist but he brought the best out in all of us. It was a really good experience.

M-N: Was that Johnny Marr playing harmonica on ‘Something moved me'?

Gary: Yes, and backing vocals. During the recording of the first album the record company were a bit weird about him playing on the album and only wanted him producing. We didn't understand why. This time round they were cool with it, it was a real collective and everyone chipped in.

M-N: Do you get pissed off that The Smiths/Johnny Marr questions keep getting thrown at you?

Gary: Johnny's connections have opened up doors for us and given us so much help. In America a quarter of our audiences were curious Smiths fans, you've got to respect that so we'll answer as many Smiths questions as you put to us.

M-N: Nat, you had to take a break from recording your album due to your illness. Had you already written and recorded most of the tracks? [ED- Bells palsy is a condition that causes the facial muscles to weaken or become paralysed]

Nat: The album was ready to go but because of the illness we didn't know how long it would take to recover. I woke up one morning and my eye was wedged open and my mouth was down. I really had to remain in darkness, even now I have to tape my eye shut at night. I was really freaked out but you have to be positive. Even though we lost a few months we spent the time writing and co-wrote ‘The First Time' with Johnny.

M-N: We thought that was the best track on the album, will it be the next single?

Gary: It's been spoken about but we really don't know.

M-N: There's a Crowded House thing going on, especially vocally.

Gary: Neil Finn is a great singer/songwriter and Johnny has been hanging out with him a lot recently. Well vocally I wanted to approach every song differently on this album, unlike the first one where there isn't anything that really differentiates each one.

M-N: You've got a sound that underneath the surface could explode in many different directions. Have you a particular route in mind?

Gary: No we just let it evolve naturally. Sometimes you have to stop yourself going down the same route and you have to play in a different way than you are used to. Johnny's good at that, he'll pin point a style of playing and then get you into the mindset so your able to play it.

M-N: It's a beautifully crafted album and a real grower. I'm interested in the psychology behind the tracks chosen for the album and the track order. How much of that is under your control?

Jack: Thank you. We sweated blood and tears on that one.
Gary: None of us wanted ‘Change Direction' to be the opening track. We could just not be objective about it. It's like the story of U2's The Joshua Tree. They got Kirsty MaColl to select the track listing and she basically said she put them in order of her favourite songs. But we couldn't do that as we all had different favourites, it was getting a real mess.
Iwan: Some of us were attached to songs that didn't even make the album.
Gary: In the end we left the order to John Chaplin. He wasn't as close to it as we were and it worked really well.

M-N: Who decides on the single?

Nat: We have our opinions and they have their opinions and when we agree that's when it happens.
Gary: I don't want to be around thinking which single is going to sell more to 14-year-old girls. I don't like the way the singles market is forcing music. For me an album is a fucking album, it's not like four singles and a bunch of fillers. Some record companies are forcing it that way. You can record an amazing album and some prick will turn round and say you've got no singles. What do they mean? Just because we haven't recorded the dross that Jo Whiley would play. All we can do is concentrate on making the next record. The MD's of record companies might have nice cars but ultimately it's the accountants that rule the roost. We've just got to hope that his calculator says we can stay on.

M-N: Any song on the album that typifies Haven?

Gary: ‘What Love Is' it's the best song we've written for a long time. Most people associate us with ‘Say Something' but we wanted to show with this album that we are not just a bunch of weirded out hippies from Cornwall.
Iwan: Jack's the weirded out hippie with a ginger beard [Laughs],

M-N: Any festivals this year?

Jack: Mount Fuji Rock Festival.
Gary: Hopefully most of the UK ones.
Nat: At Glastonbury 2002 we did a radio interview and we made a comment about the amount of people jumping the fence, and I said something like ‘they'll always get in'. The Glasto organisers had to get a tape sent to them to verify that we weren't encouraging people to jump the fence. Whether we had our slot or not depended on the decision of the organisers. It was alright in the end.

M-N: Any bands you get on particularly well with?

Nat: We've hung out with Gwen Stefani playing sitar with her. Starsailor are a good bunch, and we got drunk on a ferry with The Leaves. I got arrested on the way back from a three day thing - Blue Festival in Manchester, T in the Park and The Witness Festival in Ireland.
Gary: He [Nat] fell asleep on the ferry and as we were docking he said where's the toilet? We said over there pointing. Next thing, Nat pulled his cock out and pissed up against the bar. Obviously the ferry staff didn't like that.
Nat: I was asleep!
Iwan: Families and kids were looking at him.
Nat: I was asleep! I didn't know anything about it. When we got off the other side the Police were waiting for us. I had to make an apology to the Stenna staff and I still didn't know what I'd done!

M-N: Didn't you have a similar situation in America?

[laughs]
Gary: Yeah, he's got a problem with his penis. It's very small! [Whole band in stiches]

M-N: How's the breaking America thing going?

Gary: We had no delusions that we were going to sell millions of records. It was a great opportunity and we just tried to have as much fun as we could. We seemed to relax more on stage allowing ourselves to be more cavalier than we would have been in England. We got a lot of ideas for ‘All For A Reason' and met a lot of cool people.


Haven's new single, Wouldn't Change A Thing, has just been released through Radiate Records. It is the first single from their forthcoming Johnny Marr / Dave Eringa produced album All For A Reason which is set for release on March 29th.