Formally known as Jim Lockey and the Solemn Sun and originally a folk rock band with two strong albums and touring with some the genre’s biggest names, something happened that would change the band forever.
In 2014 the band announced that they would no longer be Jim Lockey and the Solemn Sun and that they would soon return with a new sound and style under the banner of Solemn Sun.
In October of the same year Solemn Sun released their self-titled 5 track EP, this would serve as a taste of what the new and rejuvenated incarnation of the group had to offer the world. It had positive reviews from many and felt like a new era for the band, although the band faced many challenges after making the change including disgruntled fans, different landscapes and creative achievement.
In the backroom of Swindon’s Level 3, one of the town’s more active gig venues, sat across from me are Jim Lockey and Chris Capewell, half of Solemn Sun here to talk about the past, present and future of the band.
The cramped room has changed dramatically since the last time I was here, before the walls were plastered with pages of music magazines, now all that has gone and all that remains is a grey coat of paint that gives off quite a gloomy feel.
The only things in the room are a sink and a ragged old sofa, the room is filled with smoke from Jim’s vape pen, he is inches away from me but I am struggling to see him and Chris.
What was the biggest challenge in the change? Obviously you went from touring with the likes of Pete Doherty, Frank Turner and Mumford and Sons, playing quite big venues to playing much smaller ones now, what was the biggest challenge in restarting your band?
Capewell said “It’s a real difficult thing to talk about, someone asked me this the other day and it’s like there’s this war of personal pride of playing these big rooms in front of loads of people verses personal creative achievement, like this is what we want to be doing, and actually that’s what counts, having that feeling of making something that you’re proud of is loads more important than just the bragging points of being like we’ve playing in front of this many people and being like we’re on a big tour or whatever, but we’d get in the van after doing that and be like yeah that was cool but we don’t love the songs, what’s the point in any of it.”
Lockey followed with “We really enjoyed those shows and those tours and stuff but when you finish the tour it’s like what do we do now? Like being on those shows was cool but I don’t think we wanted to go that far with that music really. Although we definitely do smaller shows now and we don’t tour as much, we just like being out and playing, it’s the only reason we do it really.”
How do you feel about the different landscape with the new genre, did you have problems with people that liked you before not liking the new sounds?
“There was quite a lot of negativity towards the new sound but I think a lot of that was to do with the old band ending rather than the new band beginning, because we didn’t really see it that way, it was still the same four guys playing music, it was just kind of more refined process of what we were doing before, so we didn’t really see the point in saying this is the end of the band we’re going to come out and do another tour or whatever because we didn’t really want to do another tour, there’s something I really hate about farewell tours, I don’t know why.” Jim said.
“It was quite an interesting experience actually because people did seem to get quite pissed off about it and in a way it’s the biggest compliment ever that someone would be so annoyed about that, but at the same time it’s weird where things get to a point where we no longer owned what we were doing and people were telling us what we should be doing, the first time we toured as Solemn Sun there were definitely some people who were pissed off we didn’t play the old songs, you don’t start a band because you want someone to tell you what you want to play, you start a band to make stuff and play what you want to play.” Chris continued.
When you became Solemn Sun you said you wanted to re-establish yourselves as people, re-invent the band and restart your journey on your own terms, it’s been two years since the release of your debut EP, do you feel that you’ve achieved what you set out to achieve originally?
“I think we did initially with the EP, definitely, it was like a strong body of work for us really I think, we were working on it while we were the old chuffty band” said Lockey
Capewell continued “but the whole point of doing our change, our movement to something else was so we could have a bit more creative license over what we’re doing and not feel at liberty to make so much what people wanted us to make, so now were just making what we want to make and we’re figuring it out along the way, but it’s a weird one because there’s this thing these days where people just expect bands to just produce stuff all the time and there’s no conversation about quality and what comes into that and how much people are moving things on.”
How do you feel about your latest single ‘Bloom’ compared to the EP? I personally got a more uplifting feeling from the song compared to the darker overtones that the EP had
“It’s good that you got that, I think it’s still very melancholy but I guess its brighter in terms of sound than our other stuff I think, but then I think a lot of that came out of its production rather than anything else, like the lyrics aren’t as uplifting.” said Jim
“I think, this is quite deep by the way, I think Bloom is the answer to your earlier question, basically that song might sound brighter than its outlook or whatever, because suddenly we’re not struggling like we were, like were not battling against a vision of what we’re doing, we’re free to do what we want hence “we are in bloom” and I think that’s what the song was really about” Chris added.
So what have you got planned for the future? Can we expect any more releases soon?
“We really, really don’t like the idea, like we know we ultimately have to do an album, but like it’s quite a ridged way of putting out music, we’re kind of writing loads of music at the moment and were just going to put it out in a way that’s interesting in a way that’s the best possible way for people to digest it properly.” Capewell stated.
Lockey continued “It’s quite important to say as well that we are writing music rather than songs as such, like there will be a few things in there that are songs and then there will be bits that are just two minutes of sounds and stuff happening that we don’t even sing on, I we’ve probably already got an albums worth of songs and material, I just don’t know if the worlds ready for that yet.”
At the end of the interview, while I had asked the pair to sign my copy of their debut EP, Chris made the point of how much happier they were as a band now that they were on a new path and making music that they wanted to make. “it was very frustrating and we don’t have any of that frustration any-more which is good, we’re nice and free now and it’s nice to be free, all’s well that ends well.”