Intervju - Lauren Harris Jag fick ett snack med Lauren Harris för lite mer än ett halvår sedan. Då satt hon i en turnébuss i Texas och var förband till pappa Steve Harris och Iron Maiden. Nu befann hon sig i vår huvudstad och tanken var från början att jag skulle möta henne personligen, men pga diverse olyckliga omständigheter blev det inte så. Doktorbesök samt punktering på bilen kan få vem som helst att säcka ihop. Istället blev det återigen en telefonintervju med denna sympatiska tjej. Vi snackade bl a om kommande plattan, låtkomponerande och om hon någonsin skulle kunna tänka sig att spela en Maidencover live. Hi Lauren! This is Niclas. Lauren Harris: Hi! How are you? Good! How are you? LH: I´m good, thank you! Getting ready for the show? LH: Yeah, just about. We´re starting to get ready in a minute. Cool! Last time I talked to you was about half a year ago. You were on a tour bus in San Antonio, Texas and you were about to go see the lates Indiana Jones movie, I believe. LH: Oh really? (laughs) I remember that. What´s been going on since then? Have you been constantly on tour? LH: Pretty much teah. We did North America and the we did like all the European festivals and shows as well, with Iron Maiden. And then we ended up finishing at the end of August basically. Then we had some time off from August to December and did some UK shows in December, some headlining shows. From there me and Richie kind of started writing some stuff as well, for the second album. We were already writing some stuff on tour, but we picked that up a little bit and finished some ideas and then basically chilling out for a couple of months, because we were like super busy that whole year and it really took it out of us. December was good though. Get some fresh air and doing some headlining shows, which we´d never done before so that was really cool. How far have you come when it comes to the next album? Are you done writing songs or are you in the middle of it? LH: We´ve got a lot of ideas, but we´ve not got a ton of stuff finished. We´re going into the recording studio in April/May and get the second album recorded and done and stuff. We will hopefully have it out at the end of the year, fingers crossed. The stuff you´ve come up with so far, is it in the same vein as the first album or will it differ a lot? Heavier or more melodic? LH: Well, we finished the other one three years ago and we´ve completely grown and miles away from where we started. We´ve been around bands and just doing the live thing basically for such a long time and I think you play songs heavier when you do them live. It´s a natural progression, so it is a little bit heavier and we´ll probably move into that direction, but still melodic. Will you be working with the same guys as the first album? Producers and such? LH: We´re not a hundred percent sure yet. We haven´t kind of talked about stuff like that at the moment. We´ve just been kind of focusing on our headlining shows and finishing off ideas and stuff that we´ve had for songs. We´re still at the early stages. After we come back from this we´re gonna sit down and talk a little bit more about it. We have a new drummer, which is cool. Is there any famous producer you would like to work with? LH: Oh my god! We were really lucky to have Kevin Shirley master the album. It would be amazing to have him because he´s incredible. Mutt Lange would be amazing. He´s great and the last Nickelback album hed id was amazing. Rick Rubin. All these producers there are up there. Wouldn´t you be able to pull some strings with your dad? Would he be able to get you some cool guy? Or do you just want to do it yourself? LH: I mean... he always kind of helps I guess, but at the end of the day if people are unavailable and if they don´t want to do it they don´t want to do it and there´s the price as well. We haven´t got s big budget like bands that are successful. There´s all of those kind of factors as well, so who knows. When it comes to working in a studio, have you picked up things over the years, how to turn knobs and stuff like that? Do you know anything about working in the studio or do you just go in and play and sing and that´s it? LH: I´m not really knowledgeable about that kind of stuff, especially since everything nowdays is done on computers and Pro-Tools is a really big part of it. I´m about as good as garage band. That´s about it! I´ll probably go into logic and then maybe on to Pro-Tools. I´d love to pick bits like that up, because it´s just handy and you can do it on the road. When it comes to writing songs and coming up with ideas, do you use like a tape recorder or a computer? LH: Well, if I´m like in the car or in bed and I´ve got something going around in my head, I usually just use the recorder on my phone, which is really quick and easy. When you sit down to work on a song, do ideas come easily? Do you sit down and tell yourself that "today I´m gonna write a song!" or does it just happen? LH: Usually the idea will pop up, like I said before... I´m in the car and listening to something and start humming something and I´ll put it down. There has been times when we´ve been kind of sitting around and just like mucking around and stuff like that and then ideas will come from that as well. But we don´t usually do "Oh, let´s write a song today!". You can do that and we have done that. I´ve been around Richie´s house and started to do something, but it doesn´t always happen like that. Do you play any instruments? Do you play guitar or piano? LH: I´m learning to play guitar, bit by bit but I´m really rubbish. (laughs) When you´re done with Scandinavia, what will happen then? More countries or are you going back to England? LH: Well, we did the UK shows in December and a couple of weeks after the Scandinavian tour we´re doing a couple of dates with Iron Maiden. Then we´re lining up festivals at the moment, for the summer. We´re doing the Rock of Ages festival and we´re trying to put some more stuff around that. That would be perfect. How do you feel about life on the road now? Is it what you expected, more difficult or easier that you thought? LH: I love being on the road. At first I was a home body, like when I was younger and was out with my dad. I loved being out, but then I was looking forward to going home and I wanted to go home after two or three weeks. But because I´ve been out for so long and because I love the people I´m with as well and my friends and my boyfriend can travel out to me, I just love being out. It doesn´t bother me spending such long periods of time on the road. We´ve been really lucky as well, being on the Maiden tour where you live under good conditions and you´re looked after. Even like the small tour we did in the UK, we did on a bus. There´s no showers and it´s smaller clubs and that was like the most fun I´ve had for ages because it was our tour. It doesn´t matter because we all get along so it´s just fun. You´re in Stockholm now. Have you been able to see anything of the town? LH: We´ve been here a couple of times now, so we kind of went back to the same places that we know. We went down to the Old town today and we found this little café last time, that we love and also, Richie used to live here for four years so he knows the town really well and he speaks fluent Swedish which is very handy. I´ve actually gotten to see quite a lot of the city which is great and I really love Stockholm. Kind of shitty weather now though. LH: It´s really cold, but I´m kind of used to it anyway. That´s the way it is I guess. You have to come back again during summer! When you play live, do you just play songs from the first album or do you throw in other stuff as well? LH: Actually we play a couple of new songs, like the ones we have actually finished. We´re doing like three new songs and we´ve thrown in an Alice Cooper cover. We play like an hour set. It´s nice to break it up because we´ve been playing the "Calm before the storm" songs for three years now. How has the new stuff been recieved by the fans? LH: It´s been going over really well. We´ve had really great comments about it. I spoke to some guy in Texas, I did a radio show and he went "I heard the UK shows went really well and I heard ´Broken mirrors´and ´Waiting for yesterday´ went over really really well." and I was like "How the heel do you know?", so obviously it´s been picked up upon which is a good thing. Would you ever do a Maiden cover? LH: (laughs) No, I don´t think I would do a Maiden cover. Make dad proud! LH: (laughs) Yeah, he´d probably just laugh at me. Well, it´s been great talking to you Lauren and I wish you all the best with the show tonight and I´m really looking forward to the next album. LH: Cool! Lovely talking to you!
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