I stumbled into The Old Bus Depot during the Dot To Dot Festival in May and came across my 'Best Find of the Day' award, as Cheap Dirty Horse played an anarchic set of songs, I was blown away by their attitude and their performance has stayed with me since. Imagine my pleasant surprise when LeftLion asked me to interview the band as part of the LGBT Pride special…
Great to meet you all, can you introduce yourselves and tell me a bit about yourselves?
Fin: I sing and play acoustic guitar! I’ve always loved music but I didn’t get into playing and writing until I was in my early 20s. Meeting Sydney and finding Folk-Punk was such a revelation for me because I’d always felt like I should probably practise electric guitar and lead guitar etc. but still always found myself coming back to just strumming and singing along with an acoustic. Apes of the State, Pat the Bunny, Alex G and Kendrick Lamar are probably my biggest influences.
Sydney: I play Electric guitar and also sing. When I was born a goblin put a curse on me.
Violet: I play bass and yell a lot! I've played music for most of my life, learning flute originally. I picked up a bass guitar not long after watching the Gorillaz music video for Feel Good Inc, and have never looked back! My influences aren't so rooted in folk punk, as I'm big on heavier punk bands like Petrol Girls and PUP, but I also love Gorillaz, Paramore, and too many others to be able to mention here!
Ellen: I'm a drummer and lifelong emo, who through some weird twist of fate has ended up playing the accordion in a folk punk band with my friends, so that's pretty cool!
Amy: I play Banjo and occasionally sing. I started playing guitar when I was 13 and played in Pop Punk bands before I fell in love with Folk Punk. I've been playing and teaching myself Banjo ever since I was asked to join Horse. My main influences are Pigeon Pit, Apes of the State, Sister Wife Sex Strike, and Of course my amazing friends in Horse inspire and influence me everyday too.
Ada: I loved the band for ages because of their vitality and sense of humour, but also their sense of community and purpose, so I was blown away when they asked me to join. I felt like I had a massive amount to live up to, and so I've had to work incredibly hard to make sure the drum performances are as high energy as humanly possible, and that I can do my part to make every member of the audience feel included and part of the community that is Horse!
You seem to have a great time on stage and behave more like a family than a band, how long have you been going?
Sydney: Fin and I started writing songs and busking together with the name ‘Cheap Dirty Horse’ a couple years ago all because the punk band we were both playing in at the time was on hiatus while our drummer James was in Thailand for the summer. We wanted something to do and then doing this turned out to be way more fun and creatively satisfying so it ended up being all we wanted to do.
Fin: James came back from Thailand and we bullied him into continuing Horse with us rather than going back to the punk band from before. At that point, it meant our setup was just two acoustic guitars and drums; it sounded awful! We realised pretty quickly that we needed a bassist. Violet and I used to work together in Leicester and I knew she was an amazing bassist but also that she was looking for more trans friends so it was the perfect match!
Amy: I joined Horse for a single show at JT Soar on bass when Violet could not make it. I hadn't performed or played in a band in years and jumped at the chance. Fin and Syd later asked me to join as a third guitarist, I wasn’t sure about three guitars, so I tried trombone briefly but then bought a banjo and everything went from there.
Fin: And a similar thing happened when James couldn’t make a show on drums! Ellen was the drummer for another band I used to be in so I asked her to fill in - but then when James came back we didn’t want Ellen to leave so we convinced her to learn how to play the accordion. As you do… Recently we decided that James being all the way in Manchester didn’t work for the band anymore and so we’ve brought in Ada on the drums!
Can you tell us about your early days as buskers? Did that help you gain confidence on stage?
Sydney: When Fin and I started busking we were going out almost every day and we thought that we could make anything close to a living from just busking full time. We had a lot of great days and if everyday was like those we could have lived off it definitely, but busking is so unpredictable. It led to us doing some open mics though, which led to some gig offers which ultimately lead us to being the band we are now. Busking also gave Fin and I a ton of experience playing together and gave us a low stakes environment to experiment and figure out exactly what Horse is which I think helped us tons during that beginning period of our band.
The queer community is where I've found my family, so anything we can do to support it is amazing. I hope us being loud, rowdy and unashamed of who we are and embracing our queerness, leads to other people making cool queer art in all its forms
I watched you at the Dot To Dot Festival and your political messages were very upfront. Can you briefly explain your beliefs and describe what folks can expect at your gigs?
Fin: Lots of energy and too many instruments!
Amy: Everyone partying and having fun listening to powerful and emotive songs that might be angry or sad, but always have hope and a drummer that never sits down!
Ellen: Energy, dancing, sadness, happiness, moshing, dads, and friendship.
Amy: As a band our politics and social beliefs are front and centre in all of our music. We’re not afraid to say what we think, and share our political ideals. If we have to list a few things though it would be: inclusive and safe shows for everyone, a free Palestine, ACAB and we need trans rights and protections for ALL trans people right now.
Speaking of punk and politics - can you tell us a bit about your recent online antics with the Ruddington Conservative Club web domain? (ruddingtoncc.com)
Fin: That video is maybe my favourite thing we’ve ever made. We got a tip from a fan that someone had bought the domain and changed it; so we’d been meaning to create some content around it for ages. With the election coming up and trans kids being politicised more and more each day, it seemed like the perfect time to get together and make it! It turned out there was a festival in Ruddington that weekend, just down the road from the conservative club, so it was a lot busier around the club than we’d expected. I was terrified the whole time that somebody was watching us and was gonna come out and beat the crap out of me. Luckily nobody did, but someone did start coming out just as I was ‘walking in’ for the final time and I’ve never run away from anything faster.
June is the LGBT Pride month and Nottingham will have many celebrations. Do you have any comments on this or the LGBT community?
Amy: The queer community is where I've found my family, so anything we can do to support it is amazing. I hope us being loud, rowdy and unashamed of who we are and embracing our queerness, leads to other people making cool queer art in all its forms, and maybe helps them too.
Sydney: There's a huge overlap between the Queer and the DIY scene. The venn diagram would be almost a perfect circle I think, which makes sense. It's all about making do with what we got, being smart with the limited resources we have access to and relying on each other for support. There's an amazing community because it's impossible to do anything alone, and so you quickly become friends with the people around you because you're working towards the same thing, queer liberation!
You’ve done some pop-up gigs around Nottingham at places like the Tram Line Spot Skate Park, what's the vibe at these impromptu gigs?
Sydney: The vibe at the DIY punk shows is always immaculate! We've been heavily involved in putting them on from the start and we bring our gear for everyone to use but it's really the whole Notts City Hardcore scene that works together to put those shows on. It's a beautiful thing to see and be a part of because everyone is there purely for love of it. We want to play music with our friends and have a good time and champion each other and be able to do it exactly how we want it. We don't need permission or any money to be able to do it and they've just been getting bigger and better every time! The DIY scene is alive and thriving.
Do you have any releases or plans for the future?
Sydney: Yeah! We put out a sort of short album last month called Cheap Dirty Horse Raise Funds to Go On Tour. It features retouched and remastered versions of the 5 singles we've put
out as well as two new tracks! It is currently only available on Bandcamp as either a digital album or physical CD because as the title suggests, we put it out to raise some money for our tour this summer. Starting the 26 July in Leicester!
Amy: But it will be coming to all streaming services in the near future - maybe around our tour dates…
Fin: We also have a live album that we recorded in Hackney a few weeks ago that we plan on dropping at some point in the next month and about 700 songs we just need to get around to recording!
You can catch Cheap Dirty Horse at Nottingham Pride on Saturday 27 July, playing Rough Trade with Gladrags and at The Angel with Dirty Filthy Sexy. Head to the LeftLion website for an extended chat with Cheap Dirty Horse
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