Bands can easily climb the ladder of fame these days and forget their roots.

They can get somewhere fast without knowing why or how. Some bands can deal with the pressure and still climb. Whether it’s your average media controlled pop artist or your funky new indie band that you want to play around with, it’s always going to happen. 

But some bands and artists will progress for years without ever getting heard properly, or ever be given a platform for their music. One of these bands is Gravenhurst.

With their brand of hard edge psychotic, yet beautiful rock, they’re hardly the advert for the primetime mainstream British music scene. Singer Nick Talbot has been around the music scene for years. Since way back in 1994 when his first band came to an end sadly with the death of their band member.

Nick has long been writing music, producing and generally being the hero of the underground scene. In 1999 he formed Gravenhurst and the rest is history. So what's the shy, music smart front man got to say about early success?

You’re a band that’s been together for the best part of a decade and never really made it mainstream. Does it annoy you that young bands can get signed so quickly and get heard without difficulty?
    “I actually feel a bit sorry and worried for a lot of young bands these days. It’s quite worrying how bands or artists get thrushed into the mainstream so quickly without any thought, and that they actually get excited about it.
    “The Kooks are quite a young band and we met them a few years back in Dublin and then again in Hamburg, and I just think that bands like that get thrown in without ever really understanding things like record deals and companies and touring. There’s also no longevity in it.
    “If these bands are getting signed so young and promoted into the spotlight will we look back on them in ten years time with much favour. Its quite pernicious young talent. Its like when I started my first band at 19, we had some interest but I’m glad it didn’t go anywhere.”

If you had the option, would you prefer Gravenhurst to become more mainstream and get heard easier, or do you prefer being slightly underground?
    “Yea I’d like as many people as possible to hear the music. It’s just so hard to get heard on radio today depending on genre. I hear stuff on radio that you wouldn’t normally expect to hear in mainstream radio, and then I’ll hear something that’s been rejected and to me it just sounds like basic straight edge pop music.
    “I think there might be issues of bribery going on in the music industry. It really wouldn’t surprise me if the record companies gave away free music to music shops and it gets put on like the front row or something. It’s the same as many elements in different industries.
    “Another thing is there’s no college radio like in America where you can hear almost anything. If it wasn’t for Internet radio, I don’t think we (underground scene) would get heard much.”

You’ve had such a long experience within the music industry with your old band Assembly Communications and with having your own label. Do you take any of that experience into Gravenhurst, or is it a group effort?
    “I’m kind of a slow writer. Some music which I may have written way back in the 90’s for other things like Assembly Communications don’t get finished. One of the songs on the new album I actually wrote back in like 1997 but it just never got finished.
    “I mean I’ve been able to put like an album out every year with Gravenhurst because I’ve got such a backlog of music. I’ve got some experience since my early days in the industry I suppose with regards to record deals.”

Your music compiles many genres such as folk, electronica and alt/rock. Could you think of any way to best describe your music?
    “Not really. that’s the journalists’ job, [Laughs]. I’ve never met a musician who can categorise their own music, or even better who wants to. I’ve got no desire or need to do that. What’s the point in categorising your music? If you have a big enough range of influences then you hope that you wont sound like any of them.     "People say that the whole reason for all this music writing etc is so that a person can walk into a record shop and find what their looking for; so why can’t we just put us under ‘G’ and leave it at that?”

At this point during the interview I’m beginning to feel that maybe Nick doesn’t really take to music journalists that well. Maybe it’s because he’s been in the industry for so long he knows the pitfalls. I decide to press on and see….

You’ve got a huge tour coming up. Is touring your favourite place to be?
    “Playing live is brilliant, I love playing live, but the rest of it is incredibly boring. Driving around for hours. If you’ve made it big then you can get planes or get a driver to drive you overnight while you’re asleep otherwise you’re driving around yourself a lot.
    “There’s only so much time you can spend just reading or listening to music before it gets boring . I’ve got my laptop now so it’s not as bad. There’s two elements of touring that make it actually seem like a job that I really wish I didn’t have. One is the actual physical side of touring, such as travelling for hours, it’s not too bad in England because you don’t have to travel very far to get where you’re going but in Europe you can be driving for ages.
    “The other element is doing interviews with journalists for hours a day…. [Awkward silence]. But playing live is amazing and there is a lot of fun parts to it when you’re with friends so it’s a bit half and half. I certainly couldn‘t see myself doing anything else”.

What would you want to do if you weren’t a musician?
    “I write a lot as well. I write my blog and that’s about politics and films. I never really write about music. I write pieces for magazines , I suppose you could call them mystery journals. I never thought music would ever pay the bills for me and earn a living. I did Philosophy at uni and actually wanted to go down that route and maybe journalism but this just took off for me”.

How much of your life is devoted to music? Is it a job or a hobby that you get paid for?
    “Mainly I just love writing music. Doing music for a living presents a big problem for musicians. It’s always good to have a bit of stability so that you can do it enough to pay the bills and earn a living off of it. But if you take it too far then it becomes a problem because you always feel under pressure to write more and more and you become a workaholic and do it too much.
    “I’ve tried doing things to get away from it. For example I lived in a caravan just outside of Bristol for six months just so I didn’t have to pay bills or write music constantly. It’s madness.”

Is there anyone that you would love to converge with musically?
    “Well there’s loads of people that I absolutely adore but I’m sure given the chance I wouldn’t want to work with them. I’d much rather prefer just to pull apart their music and see how they’ve done it and try and take that in to my own work.
    “I mean Hansel are probably my heroes but I wouldn’t want to work with them. It’s always better to keep your heroes at a distance because you don’t really want to know them, just the music. There’s a sense of mystery there that shouldn’t be broken.”

Does Gravenhurst have a future of constant touring then. More writing for you?
    “Well every time I write a song I panic, because I’m so scared that I’m not going to be able to write another one as good as this one. It’s the same with almost any artist. I bought a book about songwriters and it had people like Paul Simon saying the same. It’s hard to understand the creative process of anyone.
    “A lot of people have phobias that if they learn and understand the creative process of writing music, then it wont make sense anymore, they’ll lose [the writing process] and won’t be able to write anything”.

Nick Talbot is certainly a man whose musical knowledge and knowledge of a lot else runs deep and shows in his personality. Maybe Gravenhurst will never have a major money-laden career in music and will always sit on the bench of the music scene rather than up front, but maybe that’s where Nick Talbot prefers it.

Bigger artists have the pressures of a daily media frenzy checking their every move for a slip up. Just look at some big artists that shave their heads, nearly injure their babies and burn out at only 24 (not mentioning any names).