Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in December 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
Be Prepared – The motto of The Scouts
That’s not the motto of this website though, although perhaps it should be. Having originally been told we’d be speaking to Roy Stride, we answered the phone with “Hello Roy,” only to find that a rescheduled interview date had also given us an entirely different band member, ie Greg Churchouse. Apologies and brief panic flowed from our end of the phone line. Luckily he didn’t sound offended.
There are currently few bands more cheerful-sounding than Scouting For Girls. Made up of childhood friends Roy Stride (vocals/keyboards), Greg Churchouse (bass and vocals) and Peter Ellard (drums). Making charmingly friendly and cheeky, catchy pop, they give off an air of being incredibly nice and polite in general. The sort of band you could invite out for a drink and they’d talk to all your friends, share their crisps and even join in a game of darts, unlike other musicians who would steal your pint before drunkenly relieving themselves on the snooker table. That’s not Scouting For Girls’ style. They’re too well-behaved for that. Or so they sound.
How are you, Greg?
“Not too bad. Please excuse me if the phone goes a bit funny, we’re currently driving from Inverness to Edinburgh. The phone coverage isn’t the greatest.”
How was the gig last night?
“The gig in Inverness was amazing. One of our managers actually comes from Inverness so I think half the crowd was probably made up of his family.”
So long as they all paid to get in.
“Oh yes. The guestlist was rather short surprisingly.”
Scouting For Girls picked up their name partly on the cheeky wordplay, partly on their love of innocent childhood times spent with their Scout chums. Dib dib dib and all that. Surprisingly – nay, shockingly – Greg was not a member of the Scouts. He was however in the supremely cooler Air Cadets “because it was much more fun to fly planes and stuff.”
Did you actually get to fly planes in the Air Cadets?
“Yeah, we used to go gliding every other weekend. And every now and then we got to go and fly those little Chipmunk planes which was quite good fun. But Roy and Pete actually met when they were six at Cubs.”
So they were building their campfires and you were flying overhead laughing at them?
“Yeah exactly. They were camping out in their tents and I’m flying round, having lots of japes and larks.”
You didn’t have to do badges or tasks or anything like that did you?
“We had little exams and tests and things but they were just about performing the basics like about planes stay in the air and how to polish your boots.”
One of the things setting Scouting For Girls apart from their contemporaries is their fanbase in the Wolfcub Club. Greg explains it began as a way of enticing people onto their mailing list “by giving away a little badge and a membership card, much like the Dennis The Menace fan club when we were kids. We were all members of that, and it’s just a really great way of keeping in touch with people, and giving a little bit back and starting a little club and it took off really well.”
Members now also receive a special CD, a handy handbook, and a secret code to write in. “Apparently it’s a lot easier to decipher than it is to write things in the code. It takes us absolutely forever to actually write anything down and then people have figured it out within a couple of minutes [laughs].”
Were you in any band fan clubs when you were younger?
“Not really, I just preferred just listening to the music. Most of my favourite bands I probably couldn’t name half the people in them you know, and yet I can name the songs and the albums. I think Roy was in the REM fan club, he’s a huge REM fan.”
It’s been an incredibly hectic year for the band. Since signing to their record label on Valentine’s Day, their EP ‘It’s Not About You’ managed to become the highest charting limited edition EP – not bad, considering ‘limited edition’ generally means there aren’t that many of them. They’ve been given strong radio support (“Huw Stephens on Radio 1 gave us a Maida Vale session before we got signed, Marsha and John Kennedy on XFM have just been absolutely amazing,”) which can't have hurt matters.
Scouting For Girls are currently busying themselves on tour, from the middle of November to December, across the length of the UK. Most of this tour has sold out, so if you didn’t get tickets, consider yourselves lucky there are plenty more dates around the corner. ”The crowds have been absolutely amazing every night, we’ve been very very well received and we most definitely appreciate it.”
Scotland has been a particular high, with Glasgow seeing the best fans. “Pretty much anywhere in Glasgow, you’re always onto a winner. The crowds are always just phenomenal, I thought my ears were going to start bleeding at one point because of the crowd screaming. And I’m really looking forward to playing KOKO in London, ‘cause that’s like coming back to your home crowd, which is always lovely.”
Support this time round is from The Sonic Hearts, who Greg describes as “a lovely bunch of guys and girls. Nice melodies, nice jangly guitars, which really complements us, and they’ve been well received which is always wicked.”On this tour it’s been really weird because people have been singing along to pretty much every song, and they seem to know the words better than Roy does. Just listening to the guys singing it back to you; you can’t describe the feeling, it’s just amazing.”The newer dates will take in much larger venues. Greg says “I can’t wait it’s going to be wicked.”
The band recently played their first show abroad, at London Calling in Amsterdam. “It was absolutely amazing. We were on tenterhooks as to how the crowd would take to us, but they seemed to really enjoy it. Can’t wait to hopefully get out there and do it again. Hopefully early next year we’re going to get over and do a few dates in Ireland, and then if we’re lucky, we’re still waiting to hear back on South By Southwest in Texas, which would be absolutely awesome. I’ve never been to the States so it’ll be an adventure. Oh God I can tell you, we could do with some sun. It’s absolutely freezing in Scotland. It’s really quite sunny out there but absolutely freezing.”
Scouting For Girls debut album is cleverly titled ‘Scouting For Girls’. This is so as not to confuse people. I once asked my mum to buy me Ocean Colour Scene ‘Moseley Shoals’ and she nearly bought me ‘Ocean Drive’ by the Lighthouse Family. Anyway…
Are you pleased at how successful it’s been?
“Yeah we’ve all been bedazzled by how well it’s been going. We’ve been in bands together since we were at school, and we’re so proud of the album and so glad that people seem to really like it.”
How long was it in the making for, has it been sort of kicking around for a while?
“Some of the songs on there are like a year old and another couple of tracks are like ten years old. It’s been a long hard process but we picked the songs that work quite nicely in the album and we were just so happy with the way it turned out, I can’t tell you [laughs].
“I’m still finding it quite hard to figure out which one my favourite track is, I mean I love ‘James Bond’ but anything which mention James Bond is always a winner with me. I do quite like the secret track ‘Michaela Strachan’.”
Would you be offended if I said ‘She’s So Lovely’ was getting slightly overplayed on the radio?
“Not at all. I heartily apologise!”
It’s not your fault, you don’t do the playlists.
“I don’t listen to the radio too much so it hasn’t annoyed me yet but yeah we have heard a couple of comments [laughs] Hopefully they won’t do the same thing to ‘Elvis [Ain’t Dead]’. We were really surprised at the success and how well ‘She’s So Lovely’ did, we weren’t expecting Top 10 at all. Top 40 would have been nice but to get it up into the Top 10 for six weeks, it was amazing.”
The band are currently doing the rounds to promote new single ‘Elvis Ain’t Dead’, which obviously is not really about Elvis.
“No, it’s a common misconception. It’s actually about unrequited love, when someone leaves you and you think they’re going to come back but you’re just deluding yourself. Roy was reading an article in the newspaper about some Elvis fans in America who kind of believed The King wasn’t dead and he was kicking around somewhere in Idaho working in a burger bar, and no matter if you showed them the corpse of Elvis they’d still go ‘No, he’s still alive’. It’s a really nice kind of metaphor for a kind of first love and first loss.
“I think with a lot of our songs sometimes the subject matter can be heavy, but it’s always wrapped up in a nice bouncy sound. We’re a feelgood kind of band.”
Back to Elvis: “It would be really nice if he was [alive] you know. But if you were going to fake your own death, dying on the toilet, you’d pick something a bit more glamorous than that. He’ll always live on in his music because it’s just phenomenal. I think Elvis will carry on being huge for years and years.”
Time will tell if Scouting For Girls do the same, but they’ve certainly made an encouraging start.
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