Scream! Shout! Say Nothing Interview

by Ben on December 12th, 2008

Thanks for doing this interview with us today, can you briefly introduce yourself for our readers?
Hi, I’m Jamie. I play guitar in the band Scream! Shout! Say Nothing. The other guys are Chris (bass), Ben D (vocals and sax), Ben Street (drums) and Dan (guitar)

Is there a story behind how you met or got playing together?
It’s a little complicated, but basically we’ve all been playing in different bands around the Hertfordshire area for years now. Chris and Ben D were playing in a ska-punk band together, I was in a band with some friends and Dan was in a hardcore band. Then Ben D, Street and Dan started playing in a band together with Ben D’s brother. After a while they split up, but those three wanted to work on something new and my band had eased off because people were going away to study, so I got together with them once or twice before Chris offered to play bass, and it sort of took off from there. We’ve been good friends from playing shows together for years and Chris, Ben D, Dan and I even lived together for about 18 months.

Can you tell us anything interesting about the first gig you played?
Haha, yeah. We weren’t even supposed to be playing. Our friend Ant used to promote in Hitchin and he had booked Ella for a Saturday night. One of the support bands had dropped out so he called us on the day asking if we could open up. I remember not really feeling like we were ready to play a show because we literally had three songs and we had just moved into our house, but Chris had been out drinking all day and basically talked me into it.

How did your signing with Scylla Records come about so quickly and what is your favourite act (other than yourselves) on there?
Well it actually came off the back of that first gig pretty much. Ella liked us and asked us to play a night they promoted in Bristol, supporting Jairus which was really cool for us. Rich from Scylla saw us – he was there because they put out Ella’s last EP – and a little while after he contacted us asking what our plans for the demo we were making were.

As for a favourite act on Scylla, that’s really tough because the label does such a good job and has a pretty diverse group of bands. Ella’s new stuff is sounding ridiculously good live and I can’t wait to hear their new album when it’s finished. Out of Sight have an album coming out soon too which again, I’m excited to hear, and Proceed are pretty great too – we’ve played a lot of shows with them recently and they’re good fun to be around.

On your latest EP, you used brass and woodwind instruments. Was this a conscious effort to change your sound, or did it just happen more naturally?
We’d always wanted to use the sax because Ben D is an accomplished player and we were into the trumpet that bands like American Football or Sigur Ros used, but on our earlier songs there wasn’t much call for it. With the new EP we were recording songs that we’d been playing live for a while, so some of them were from the earlier writing we did. For example, ‘Gimme Inner Peace…’ is one of our oldest songs, but it has that big brass section on it. Ben D had always said he wanted to do that on the outro of that song and recording it gave us a chance to get a couple of our friends involved with the EP. We will never try to shoehorn the saxophone into songs though. If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit. We’re not trying to make a gimmick out of it.

Is there a particular process you go through to write songs, or does it change from song to song?
It’s basically the same every time. It comes together at practise, and it usually takes a few weeks to finish each song. It normally just starts with a guitar idea or something on the drums. Nobody ever has a whole song ready before we practise.

A while ago, you produced a 30-second song for a Punktastic compilation. Was it hard trying to write a short song rather than a longer one, which is what you are used to?
We don’t intend to write long songs, they just seem to come out that way, but yeah 30 seconds was definitely different! To be honest I think once we stopped worrying about how we were gonna manage it and sat down to write something it came pretty easily. That was fun for us to do though and I’ve been reading Punktastic for years so it was cool to be involved with them.

What’s next for you guys, any immediate plans?
Well we’re just about to play with Hell is for Heroes on one of their last ever dates, which is pretty much a huge honour for us because we’ve been massive fans of them since before Neon Handshake came out. We’ve got a few gigs leading up to Christmas but we want to get back to writing as soon as we can. We’ve got a few ideas floating around.

Interview conducted by Lew. You can purchase Scream! Shout! Say Nothing’s new EP here and check them out on myspace for music, news, gig info and everything else.