Photo credit: Katherine Garcia
Chubby and the Gang is a very interesting band, to put it lightly. Spearheaded by chief songwriter Charlie Manning, they have to be one of the more stylistically diverse rock bands out at the moment. While solidly rooted in punk, the music also brings in elements of rock and roll, surf rock, classic pop, doo-wop, blues, power pop, and glam rock, giving them a sound that’s there’s and there’s only. Now, Charlie’s released a third record, and his first completely solo venture under the moniker, ‘And Then There Was…’, out now on Flatspot Records. So, I sat down with him to talk about what it was like going solo for the new album, as well as his upcoming tour dates, the state of modern music, and the world’s constantly unsteady political climate.
I wanted to talk to you first about your new record, which I really enjoyed. It seemed to take a lot longer comparatively than your last LPs to come together, and obviously there’s reasons for that that we can come on to in a little bit, but was part of it wanting to take your time a bit more with this one? Give it some more breathing space?
No, it was purely logistical setbacks. I demoed the whole thing out, start to finish, at a studio in London called Fuzz Brain, which I highly recommend. So, I demoed that out a year and a half ago, and then it was just me and Jonah [Falco], who is in the band ‘Fucked Up.’ He was helping me. He’s a fucking unbelievable drummer. So, we were sort of fleshing out tracks, because a lot of times what I want to do, and what can be done is sometimes not really working. We had the record for a long time, and I think a lot of people like didn’t believe in the band basically. A lot of fucking people were just like, “It’s cooked, it’s done”, type shit, so I had a I had a point to prove with it. I wanted to get it out ASAP, but these things take time. I was on my own. I was doing everything on my own. The previous records I wrote everything on my own anyway, but there was just… In a band, in a band practice, I would show people the songs. With this record, there were no band practices, it was straight in for the demo, and so it took a bit longer. The first one actually took a little while to come out, because it was just me doing my own thing kind of thing.
Leading on from that, from what I could see, it was just you working by yourself on this one. Obviously, you’ve mentioned Jonah, and you talked about how you would write a lot of the stuff yourself anyway, and I was going to ask if your being by yourself was a bit more of a freeing process? Like, even though you already wrote some of the stuff by yourself before, was it a bit more of a kind of, “Oh, I can literally do anything now because there’s just me”?
Yeah. I think with the timeline of Chubby and the Gang… [The first album] ‘Speed Kills’, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to do the band, but I was just writing stuff, and I was like, “This sounds alright, let me have a go at doing this.” So, I wrote the music, and then recorded the music, and then I had to fucking sing on it, which I’d never done before. So, I was like, “Oh shit.” So then that took an extra bit of time. So, it’s almost like I recorded the record twice: music and then vocals, because they were like, “Right, so where’s the vocals on it?”, and it was like, “Oh, I didn’t think about that bit.”
Then with [second album] ‘Mutts Nuts’, A lot of people liked ‘Speed Kills’, which was great, and very flattering, but then they were like, “Wow, I like this. Let me have an input”, and it just wasn’t working, so a lot of times there were people being like, “I think it should be like this” and it just kind of flopped. It was more liberating being alone, because I’ve been in bands before where people have multiple inputs and stuff, but I’m talking more about other people outside of the band trying to be like, “Why don’t you do this? Why don’t you do that?”, and it was just like “Fucking hell.” I felt like the steering was getting taken away from me a little bit. So, it’s very nice to be able to just be like, ‘No one’s telling me what to do on this. If you’ve got input, stick it in the fucking bin, mate. I don’t wanna know.”
Your music is primarily on a punk basis if you like, but there’s all kinds of things like surf rock, and psychedelic music, and western music, and doo-wop and stuff like that. Is it that you’re just bringing in as many things as you like? Like, is it intentional, or is it just an innate thing?
It’s a little bit of both. I listen to a lot. I’m very big on blues, and like doo-wop, and bluegrass, and things like that. So, I think, listening to stuff, it inevitably works its way in there at some point. But, when writing, especially when it comes to the recording process where we’re starting to layer things, instruments, XYZ, I do make sure that I throw everything in the kitchen sink at it, and then see what sticks, and then if it won’t fucking work, I take it out. I try to do more than less. A couple of the tunes on the record, we were like, “There is a lot going on here”, and so we need to pull stuff out. Like, I remember the song ‘The Ravelin’, the chorus had like these oohs and ahs, and it had a lead, and it had a second vocal doing a melody behind it, and it had a bit of organ, and it just ended up being like, when it got to that bit, nothing… Did you ever see the bit in ‘The Simpsons’ when they talk about Mr. Burns being ill, and all the diseases trying to go through the door, and there’s like nothing can get through?
I’ve not, but I get the idea, yeah.
Yeah. It was just like everything getting wedged in the door, and nothing came through. It just was too much happening. So, there’s been moments where we’ve had to sit there and be like, “There’s a lot going on. There’s too much going on there. We need to pull that out”, or whatever, but that shit becomes apparent. You can tell when it’s like, “The second organ might not be needed.”
There’s the artwork for the LP as well, which I think is great. It reflects the vibrant sound of the record quite well. How did that come about? Did you work with anybody, or did you do it yourself?
No, it was this guy, Spoiler. He’s a friend of mine and plays in some great bands. He’s based in Montreal. He does a lot. I mean, he did like a Terror record, and lots of shit. He’s great guy, good artist. He did the first two LPs, and yeah, you can see he’s just quality at what he does. I wanted to do a trilogy, at least, of those kinds of visuals. Maybe the next one I might do like something else, if there is a next one, but I definitely want to keep on the theme. I’d want to make it different, but same kind of thing. I just felt like part of Chubby’s aesthetic is the chaos, sonically and visually, you know?
Spoiler’s great, psychedelic cover art
I don’t know whether you self-produced it, but when I was looking through some of the information you were working with a guy called James Atckinson?
Yeah, or Atcko, as we call him.
I’ve always said that how a band or an artist, and a producer work together is really, important. So, what was your guys’ relationship like in terms of that collaboration?
I’ve been recording with him for a long time. Like a lot of the old hardcore bands I used to play in, I would record with him at his at his older studio. I’ll say this man: the guy is the perfect combination of talent, taste and ability. Like he knows. If I’m out of place, and I’m stuck, and I’m like, “mate, I don’t know how to fucking do this but let me try and describe to you. I know what I want, but I’m not sure how to get there”, he’s the man to do it. Having him and Jonah Falco there in the studio, I’ve said this before, but it’s like it’s kind of hard to fuck up. Those two together is kind of a dream, to be honest with you. I couldn’t recommend it higher enough, going to Station House in Leeds. He’s got all this really great equipment from the 50s, 60s, 70s. He has good taste, so like if I’m like “mate, is it just sounding a little ‘ehhh’?”, he’ll be like, ‘No, that’s good”, or like, “Yeah, a little bit.” I’m not very good at taking criticism off people, but I can listen to what he has to say. I very much respect him.
They’re fun as well, you know. Being in the studio, especially if you’re doing stuff like on your own, sometimes you can be like, “Argh, my brain”, and then they’ll be there to give a bit of light entertainment. It’s fucking quality.
You’ve also got a fair few live shows coming up, going all the way to the end of the year and possibly beyond that. I wanted to talk to you a bit about the live thing, because with a band like Chubby and the Gang, it’s going to be a very energetic rock show, because it primarily has a punk basis, but there’s obviously all kinds of different influences going on in there as well. I can imagine playing with a full live band is a great buzz, but like the audience must be such a massive mix of people. It must be quite a cool vibe at your shows?
Yeah. There’s a lot of different types of people at the show, which is cool. I think it’s city dependent as well, like we’ll go to a certain town and there’ll be more hardcore guys at one gig, then we’ll go somewhere else, and they’ll be more indie type people. You can’t really tell. I never really thought about it, but, yeah, it’s quite a few different people there.
Do you prefer playing bigger festivals? Or is it more of a buzz for you to play smaller clubs?
I try to keep it as existential as possible with that kind of shit. If it’s one, or 100, or 10,000, or whatever, keep it the same. If I showed to a gig and then I’m like, “There’s four people here, urgh!”, then I’m starting to lose it. I don’t like that rockstar stuff where I feel entitled to have a certain amount of people at my gigs. If people wanna come, come on in. If you don’t, stay at the bar.
There’s a lot of very hard-hitting political issues that get addressed in your music. Some of the tracks like ‘Anticop’ on this new one is a good example. This is maybe a bit of a deep question, but there’s been a lot of protests for various issues going on at the moment, like the Israel-Palestine conflict, for instance. I wondered whether you had any opinion on whether music was any more or less or effective, or just had a different type of effect, to going out and protesting in the street?
It’s hard, isn’t it? It’s often quite a helpless feeling, I think, at this current political time, especially in the UK. I feel a little bit like, “Damn, what is gonna work here?” I think it’s all many parts of the same machine, if you will. Protest songs, protest action, it’s all part of the same umbrella. I get pretty upset with musicians when they start doing this aggrandising shit where it’s like, “Through music, we can change the world”, which is like, “OK. But to what degree? We’ve already been through the 60s, and fuck all happened, to be honest with you.
If it wasn’t for music politics in music, then I don’t think I would be as political as I am, which has an effect. So, certainly as a young kid growing up, I did definitely read books and checked shit out, because I was into punk music, and that had an inherent part of it that was political, even in its existence. I think music can affect people on mass, and individuals, who then in turn, go out and do stuff which might affect the wider issue, but I don’t necessarily think a song is gonna make everything OK. It’s like blowing in the wind. is If that ain’t gonna do it, fucking Chubby and the Gang ain’t. I guess it’s like, some geezer wrote ‘Catcher in the Rye’, and then suddenly, everyone’s getting shot over it. So he probably didn’t think that was going to happen.
As much as there are political lyrics on the album, though, there are also a fair few that seem a lot more personal to you. Like ‘To Be Young’, which seems to deal with youth malaise, and then ‘Some Make You Better…’, which is maybe about drug use, and then there’s tracks like, ‘To Fade Away’ or the closer, which seem to deal with existentialism, and life and death. Was it important to you to get these more personal, inward-looking lyrics out on the table?
Yeah. Not necessarily “important”, but I was like in a very lonely spot. I didn’t have many people around me, and I was sort of going off the rails a bit. So, I was very inward looking in my life, which translated into the music I’m guessing. ‘Some Make You Better, Some Make You Sicker’ is about being diabetic and also taking drugs. I’d go to the hospital and they’d be like, “Yeah, and you take these pills, and this insulin here”, and I’m like, “Sweet.” Then I go out to the pub and just get fucking blasted. It’s the contrast between, “some drugs are good, some drugs are bad, but shit, they’re all going down.” That one, I wondered what people would have thought after it got released, because it could be read into multiple ways.
I think it was more that I had the confidence. I’m three albums deep now, and on the first one, I certainly didn’t have the confidence looking back. At the time I thought I had all the confidence in the fucking world, but looking back, I’m like, “Oh, that makes sense.” There’s a couple of songs that sort of open up, but [Cocaine Sunday] way more like, “Right this is how I feel.” I find it quite difficult to open up, because I’m not really that kind of person.
Just one last question really before we end it. With the Top 40 charts, and the pop charts being arguably bigger than they’ve ever been, I’ve heard a few people say that because of the lack of like alternative music in the charts, that guitar music’s dead. Personally, I disagree, because I think there’s people like yourself doing stuff that’s cool, and worth people’s time, but what are your thoughts on that?
My initial response to that would be, “Why aren’t people saying there needs to be more bassoon music in the charts?” Things change, but as someone who loves guitar, my answer would be different. Most music in this world, unfortunately, is built to be sold like any fucking thing, like a car or a fucking frying pan. They make this shit to sell it. A lot of it, and especially stuff that’s in the charts, you hear about all these dodgy deals to get numbers up and stuff like that. Getting a guitar’s expensive, getting an amp’s expensive, going to band practice is expensive, and then you got to find 5 people that can do that. I was watching this interview with Stuart Lee, the comedian, and he was talking about funding for the arts, and about how Keir Starmer’s promising a lot of money for venues and stuff. A venue is sort of the end of the journey. You need to have time, you need to have money, and you need to be able to have affordable rent to be able to start a band, because otherwise you’re at fucking work 80 hours a week, whatever the fuck you’re doing.
The last thing on your mind when you’re in poverty is to start a fucking punk band, you know? So, there’s that element to it where people’s time and money needs to be freed up in order for them to play music, and if not, it’s not going to happen. So, all this Art Council funding thing… I’m gonna speak for myself here, but I don’t wanna fucking get money off the government to play guitar. It makes me feel like I’m in their pocket. I think guitar music’s suffering because of because of that. Then I think, things change, things ebb and flow. I guess you just have to roll with the punches a little bit, but I think the reason why a lot of guitar music is not being able to get anywhere, is because you basically need to start off with money and time, and that limits it to people who are from upper classes. So, here’s some art student wailing on about how like how difficult life is. I don’t fucking wanna hear that. I’m not gonna cuss it out, but this is a lot of this post punk shit now, these days. I’m just like, “Shut up mate.”
Chubby and the Gang’s new record, ‘And Then There Was…’ is out now on Flatspot Records. You can order it here. The band will also touring Europe and the UK and Ireland throughout the rest of the year. You can find a full list of dates below, and buy tickets here.
Tour dates:
November 17th – Haarlem, Netherlands – Patronaat
November 18th – Cologne, Germany – Helios 37
November 20th – Hamburg, Germany – Molotov Club
November 21st – Malmo, Sweden – Plan B
November 22nd – Berlin, Germany – Monarch
November 24th – Antwerp, Belgium – Het Bos (Co-Headline w/ Conservative Military Images)
November 25th – Paris, France – Point Ephemere
November 26th – Bordeaux, France – Rock School Barbey
November 27th – Lyon, France – Ninkasi
November 28th – Lille, France – Aeronef
December 3rd – London, England – Moth Club
December 4th – Manchester, England – Yes (Pink Room)
December 6th – Glasgow, Scotland – McChuills
