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The Original Dave Band

What's the name of your band/act and where do you come from?

We are 'The Original Dave Band' based in Derbyshire.

Phil Rose (27), who has joint talents as singer and rhythm guitarist, Alex Harker (28), with lead guitar, John Blackshaw (40), bass guitar/keyboard and Nick (brother of Alex), 24, who plays the drums.

As individuals, we all have common musical inspirations, Phil has a leaning to more commercial type rock music, John towards heavier and riff-driven rock and metal, Nick has leanings towards more physchedelic and blues, Alex’s tastes are blend of all of these.

We originally formed back in Allenton in 2004 with Alex and Nick just playing electric guitar and drums together, not particularly well! We tried a couple of different extra guitarists before finally settling on Phil (happily from nearby Alvaston). We found a bassistÌý to join us for around a year before he left the band, so we put an ad in the local paper for a new bassist, which John thankfully answered. Our first performance was in 2006, with a nail-biting appearance at The Moon & Sixpence in Ilkeston.

What do you sound like?

We like to mix it up playing varying genres such as Rock, Blues, Reggae, and Psychedelic.ÌýWe even like to switch genres during a song which can help assert a change of direction and feeling in the lyrics.

Who are your influences?

We all have quite varying influences such as Jimi Hendrix ,Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Guns 'n' Roses and the Foo Fighters to name a few.

Tell us about some of your best songs.

Our songs come from our own experience of life, whether it be the grind of the 9-5, a weekend trip in the Peaks or the latest political happenings.

One of the most powerful songs we have written is called Man and Beast. It was written during a band weekend out in the Peak district where we found ourselves hiking through some of the most amazing scenery imaginable - rock formations formed thousands of years ago and within them caves that we spent most of the weekend exploring.Ìý

This was the inspiration and catalyst for the first part of the song that describes a person who stumbles across an old cave with ancient messages covering the walls.Ìý A small atmospheric instrumental leads into the final part of the song where we travel back thousand of years to when the explorer originally finds the cavern and we learn of the messages written.ÌýThe song is finger-picked throughout the first part leading to a more powerful strummed ending.

We have written quite a few songs now, and we seem to have found ourselves our own unique niche or style, where we'd hope that someone would listen to a new track and know it was an Original Dave track even if they didn't initially know who was playing.

Songs that we feel really represent us best include songs such as Pieman-Deluded, Twisted Bush, Man and Beast and others.

The Original Dave Band live

Pieman-Deluded originally started life as a song called Deluded which was quite a heavy typical rock song, but never really had much heart, and it was left only ever being performed a couple of times live. A while after, we were messing around with the song at a rehearsal session, and realised that the song had much better potential when the same chords were played, but in a completely different style. It was married up with some other lyrics Nick had written, and a half song we had been playing around with, and the song was born a second time, but far more interesting musically and lyrically. The song is loosely based on a friend of the band (actual nickname Pieman), who has had a very rough time during his life. The song is about his daily life (and tedium) being forgotten by nearly everyone and the uncaring attitude towards him by officaldom. Pieman incidently has seen the song performed several times and proud a song has been written about him!

Most Original Dave songs have a strong lyrical influence from political views to things that happen to us everyday, to something that strikes a chord (no pun intended) in the news of the day. Hurricane was written by Phil as a fantasy cryptic interpretation of the daily grind of work, where as Twisted Bush was written by Nick as an attack of George Bush’s foreign policy.

What was your most memorable performance?

One of our favourite performances has to be The Bell in Derby, in May 2008. We were originally meant to be playing the first slot of four bands, but in the end we ended up playing second only to Paddy Considine's (from the awesome Dead Man's Shoes/Hot Fuzz) band, 'Riding the Low', which was a real honour, especially as we didn't realise until about an hour before we were meant to go on.

We played to our biggest crowd that night and got a massive response from them. We all agreed afterwards that we couldn’t have played it any better, and sound set-up was perfect (this is from a band that normally are their own worst critics!).

Where can people come and watch you play live?

27th July – The Victoria Inn – Derby

8th August – The Victoria Inn – Derby

30th August – Carver Road community centre – Burton-On-Trent

12th September – The Mist – Derby

4th October – The Maze – Nottingham

23rd October – The Wardwick – Derby