Your name:
Lauren Tate.
Where are you from?
Well, me and Danny (bassist) are from Barnsley, Our
drummer Laura is from Chesterfield and Sean lives in Sheffield, originally
from Shannon Ireland.
Name of band:
Hands Off Gretel.
Who is in your band?
I’ve worked with my guitarist Sean McAvinue for
the last couple of years, we did a lot of acoustic gigs together over the
summer and wrote my first EP ‘My Reflection’ last year. Laura Moakes
the drummer and Danny Pollard the bassist joined us late 2014. That’s
my lil band.
How would you describe yourselves and your music?
The songs have been heavily influenced by my love of 90’s
grunge bands, the music does have this old-school feel but I think there
is something both nostalgic and new about this project, I'm not just
trying to be a copycat band.
I’d describe us as playful, we work hard, we take it
serious, but we aren’t serious, we are always laughing and enjoying ourselves..
the music allows us to have fun and I’ve always wanted to be
entertaining for the people watching me.
Who are your main influences musically?
LOUD women, my favourites being Courtney Love, Brody
Dalle, Kathleen Hanna, Kat Bjelland and Janis Joplin, they just have
these voices that cut through the music and grab you if you want them to or
not. The music I’m writing has particles of them inside it, I like that.
What do you hope to achieve in music?
I want Hands Off Gretel to awaken people, give
people a place to escape and make them feel part of something. We
can’t get anywhere without people's support and together we can make
a change.
Music comes in waves and we are ready for a change, right?
I want to look out at a sea of faces singing along and
feeling as good as we do and get that feeling of oneness we’ve been working
so hard for.
I know how good music has made me feel growing up and I
hope our music will do the same for others. I always felt I missed
out on my favourite bands, like I was never part of the scene they
were in, it all feels very dated. I want to bring back that homemade
‘girl doing it all herself’ approach, I want everything hand designed and
personal, to make people feel they connected with us right from the
beginning. We are not a band that will be morphed into anything we are
not.. no way!
What has been the highlight of your career so far, and
why?
As the band has only just started out and not played any
gigs yet it’s hard to pick the highlight. The best feeling has probably
been when we started to see the amazing comments about the band
moments after we’d launched our music for the first time, I was so
nervously excited I had to walk away from the computer chair before I threw
up.
And what’s the moment you want to forget?
Haha! If I tell you that, the last thing people will do
is forget about it.
Some things have to stay as ‘drunk moments’, I must tame
myself really, I can be an idiot.
If you had to pick just one of your songs to represent
your music, what would it be and why?
We haven’t released my favourite song yet, the three songs we
released FREE were some of the first I wrote for Hands Off Gretel,
But, I’m going to go with ‘BE MINE’. We have a video for that one.. but
we are going to make colourful, fun videos for all of the songs.
Where can we listen to it?
Where can we find out more about your music?
OUR WEBSITE: www.handsoffgretel.co.uk
OUR FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/handsoffgretel
OUR SOUNDCLOUD: www.soundcloud.com/hands-off-gretel
Anything else you’d like to say about your music that I
forgot to ask?
We hope to make more and more of it. We want to share our
journey with everyone and want everyone to feel part of it. We
want to meet the people that are supporting us and have supported me
for some time! There’s nothing more to say really, just that we
cannot do it without people's help and enthusiasm and it is this that
will drive us towards that dream!!
