Ireland is the third-largest island in Europe, home to over 6 million people, and out of the city of Dublin comes a band that is more determined to get their music heard across seas. That band is Lluther, with a unique hard rock, alternative, and sometimes industrial style that blends so well it brings a smile to almost anyone that’s had the pleasure of hearing them. Having a pretty good following in their home country, the band decided it was necessary to come across and begin a huge nationwide tour with just the bare necessities. Two shows in our neck of the woods of Charlotte were on the list, and yours truly made it out to both. First seeing them performing alongside some of my favorites, The Feral and Deadstar Blues, at The Chop Shop. The second and final Charlotte appearance on the tour happened in The Saloon at The N.C. Music Factory. I took time to sit down with the band discussing their travels, their feelings on The Saloon show where wrestling legend Mick Foley was on-site, and their newest album Rise of the Reptile King.
Shutter 16: Alright guys, you just played The Saloon at The N.C. Music Factory and surprisingly Mick Foley (retired professional wrestler) was here performing at The Comedy Zone along with other wrestlers in the industry to support as audience members including Ric Flair. Some of you guys are wrestling fans, how was that with them walking around?
Hytham: It gave me a shock, I nearly had a heart attack when Ric Flair walked by.
Leon: Gerry pointed Mick out at the diner across the way saying “You know that wrestler, Mankind?” I said yeah and he told me that was him right over there.
Gerry: I don’t know anything on wrestling but I saw him walking in.
Leon: He’s a legend, an absolute legend, probably one of the most recognizable and liked wrestlers. We went outside and asked if we could get a photo with him and of course he did the Mick Foley thing, totally turned the questions around saying, “Well forget about me, what about you? Where are you from?” I told him we were musicians and he replied “Oh really, I’ve got this skit I do with “Sweet Home Alabama” would you be able to play it?” We were like eh, well I can’t but I know he can. So Hytham went to the van to learn it.
Hytham: We came here and we were doing our sound check, they were downstairs for the comedy thing. I ran around and learned it within 20 seconds, it was only 3 chords. Went downstairs and it was great, awesome, and fantastic, We went down thinking there’s no way were going to get in here, but we were able to get him in for an interview for our documentary we’re filming. He told us he would be honored and flattered if we included him on the documentary. I was up on stage with Mick in front of Ric Flair, Edge, and The Hurricane, it was like I was 15 years of age again, I was nervous.
Logan: It was funny too because he said he wanted to come and see the show, however they were stuck in Q&A too long, so he missed it. Afterwards he came up to the merchandise booth and talked a little bit, got our CD and as Leon said blaring out to “The Dollhouse” in his car, giving us the rock signs. Hopefully he likes the stuff.
Shutter 16: One thing that most people will notice hearing Logan talk is that he is not from Ireland like the other members.
Logan: Not at all.
Leon: He’s an American, we’re trying to teach him, trying to train him. We have him crapping in a box (laughs).
Shutter 16: How did it all go down in meeting each other?
Logan: Well, the first people I met were Bill and our old booker. They came into Guitar Center where I was working and people asked me all the time to be in their band that never heard me play so I blew all of them off.
(other members): Whoa, whoa, whoa, you didn’t blow us off? (joking and laughing)
Logan: I did blow you guys off at first. Point is I blew them off at first I guess.
Gerry: Point is we needed a drummer, we went to Guitar Center, picked one up, tried to pick up a tambourine the same day. (laughs)
Logan: You didn’t buy the tambourine, I was actually pretty upset. (laughs)
Leon: We did get the shakers. (laughs)
Hytham: We couldn’t afford a good drummer, so we just got lucky. (joking and laughing)
Logan: I was incredibly hesitant to leave my life behind at first. I was proud of my full-time job, I was proud of going to school, but after I played with them it seemed like the right thing to do. I had a big pro/con list and I was writing everything out. I studied game theory so I weighed it out going if this doesn’t out weigh my other circumstances, I wasn’t going to do it. The potential that turned me onto it was they have a couple of live videos up on the website from a gig in Dublin. I watched them saying that’s a real band, these aren’t stupid kids that come in asking me to be in their band everyday. I tore up the pro/con list thinking you know even if the tour fails and nothing comes from this, it’s an experience I need to have.
Gerry: Within one week, Logan left college, his job, and his apartment.
Logan: My cat.
Shutter 16: No, not the cat!
Leon: We did four short rehearsals and he learned an entire set playing a show after being with the band four days.
Logan: It was actually two and a half, we tried to do a third rehearsal but the police shut us down.
Leon: Logan has fitted right in, he’s a pretty talented drummer, bit of a legend when it comes to philosophy and interesting things to talk about. Everybody in the band loves him. You know there is a bit of intermediate period with a new member but that period didn’t happen.
Gerry: The previous drummer, we had toured for five months and we had been together for rehearsals for a year before that. So the band was very tight, but he took a really big job and succeeded at it.
Leon: Thinking about the situations if we didn’t have Logan, we would have been absolutely fucked. The universe works in weird ways, I think Logan being in the band was meant to happen. If he wasn’t in the band in the right now, we probably wouldn’t be here right now.
Shutter 16: The new album Rise of the Reptile King is completely different from Agents of Empire. Which was a huge long time of six years from that album to this one. What was going on during that six year period?
Gerry: Touring, lot of touring through Europe. I think initially the people who were involved with Lluther in the studio were friends who wanted to come touring. We did 7 or 8 tours in Europe, that went quite well. The last tour, which was the biggest tour in 2006. The first album playing live was extremely angry but doing that every single night for weeks and weeks, it’s draining, not only physically, it’s mentally. The idea on the new album was to get a little more broad with the target market. Don’t get wrong those clubs in Europe are really good but when you’re playing those shows it’s very mono-dimensional unless you extract yourself from that. You can easily just chunk out seven more albums like the first album, and have a nice little career, which would be very boring. So the idea was to broaden it all up.
Leon: Music is all about pushing your boundaries. I think that’s what Gerry does. I don’t think he’s going to write the same kind of music for his entire career. You can do that, and you can be successful doing it. Any bands that I really like, any bands I’ve liked a long time, not only challenge themselves but challenge their fans. I mean we’re not going to go write an Aqua album or do the dub-step. If you’re not challenging yourself as a musician, then you’re in the wrong place.
Hytham: It’s a constant evolution and with the first album if we came up with a second album that was the same, there’s no way we could tour the states and have the same impact.
Gerry: You’ve got to be really careful as well because you can’t do something so different that you exclude anybody.
Leon: Rise of the Reptile King is a Lluther record, its a progression, its an evolution. If you listen to the live show, we have songs from Agents and we have songs from Reptile King in that set and they work together. Poles apart though they are very different as individual records.
Shutter 16: This is the first time for Gerry, Leon, and Hytham here in the states. Was there any kind of culture shock coming here?
Gerry: Not really, we have a mixture between U.K. and American television and our own television so there’s not much of a culture shock.
Leon: The only culture shock for me is that chips and crisps are two very fucking different things.
Gerry: Biscuits and cookies. You are all wrong on that by the way, not going to get into that right now. (laughs). Also over the last few weeks they were referring to me as a foreigner, thats shocking to me because I’m like what, why? We don’t feel foreign because nothing is new to us.
Leon: We’ve had such a good experience, the people we’ve met are so welcoming. We’ve had people having us five or six days in their house, feeding us, and letting us use their washer machine.
Hytham: We actually are sad we’re having to leave here. Charlotte for me, has been the gem because we’ve got some real friends here now.
Gerry: Two places that stick out, Charlotte is one of those places that sticks out and Tallahassee is the other one.
Leon: We’ve got some great friends in Tallahassee too.
Shutter 16: You started on the west coast and now are on the east coast for the tour.
Gerry: We started in Chicago, and picked up our van and a load of equipment in Des Moines to Houston for shows. Houston to five weeks in Los Angeles, then went east a little bit, then went back to Houston, then back east again, then went north, back down south, and going back up north again.
Leon: Went 26 states, and it doesn’t feel like we covered that much.
Logan: I feel like I’ve been on tour for a year but it’s been like 2 ½ months.
Shutter 16: That concludes the interview, thank you guys for having me.
If you want to check out Lluther, go to their official website here:
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