Interview: Maybeshewill

After years of extensive touring, UK instrumental rockers Maybeshewill finally decided to get back in the studio and record a new album. Since their 2011 release "I Was Here for a Moment, Then I Was Gone", they have earned a huge fan following, grabbing the attention with their brand of instrumental rock with electronic elements. Touring regularly around UK, Europe and Asia they have played with acts like And So I Watch You From Afar, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Lite and many more. 

We recently had the opportunity to interview John Helps, guitarist, who filled us in about the band's influences, their new album and DIY ethics.

Before we start the interview could you introduce yourself to our readers?

I’m John from the band Maybeshewill. We’re a band from Leicester in the UK.

How would you like to describe your sound?

We play guitars, bass, drums and keys alongside samples and programming. We usually don’t have vocals.

Being a DIY band, what kind of difficulties did you have to deal with ? Would you like to share some tips for DIY bands around the world?

I wouldn’t necessarily say there were difficulties, but we decided early on that we’d do as much as we could ourselves rather than asking other people to do them for us. We manage and tour manage ourselves, record everything ourself and up until the last record has booked our own shows. As the band grows there are some things we’ve asked friends and people we trust to look after for us, and they do a great job - but it’s a very small circle of people who work on running the band I suppose. Perhaps we’ve missed out on a few opportunities because of that, but for the most part we’re a weird instrumental band that people sometimes don’t know what to do with anyway, so guiding our own destiny has been positive.

Tell us about the writing process of your new record. How does it differ from your previous releases?

The new record has been a long time coming - we toured I Was Here For A Moment Then I Was Gone for a really long time and so we didn’t start working on the new record properly until relatively recently. It’s more ambitious, more expansive and more positive than previous records I think.

What were your influences when you started the band and your influences now while writing the new album?

We’re a very different band to to how we were when Robin and I first started writing music in our university halls. A lot of those same ideas are still there, but the five band members have their own influences and ways of doing things and everyone contributed to what makes the band what it is.

What are your expectations and what should fans expect from the new record? 

We’re really excited to get the fourth record out, but we’ve always kept our expectations modest. Everything we’ve achieved with the band has been a bonus on where we thought we’d be at any given point, so hopefully that trajectory will continue and we’ll get to go and play our music for more people and in more places than we did with the last album.

Have you decided a name for the album yet?

Not yet. We’ve got some ideas.

Do you think your sound has evolved from what you started with? Are there any major changes in the sound from any of your past works?

I’d hope so! The instrumentation has remained roughly the same but we've got better at executing it and we have more at our disposal than we did in the past with real studio spaces, so I think we capture it much better on record these days than we did when we were recording our first two LPs in spare bedrooms and borrowed spaces. 

You guys have toured with bands from all around the world. Any particular band that you loved seeing the most?

When we first started touring we did a bunch of shows with And So I Watch You From Afar, and they were a real inspiration. They made us pull our socks up and be a better live band than we were before. I think at that early stage in our career that was important. Since then we've toured with a bunch of people we really respect, and made new friends all over the place. Playing with And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead was a personal highlight - I've really loved that band for years, and they were awesome people.

Apart from being Maybeshewill, what else do you guys do? Any side project(s)? 

We all do other things outside of the band. Jamie and Robin play in Dark Dark Horse, Matt plays with a band called Buenos Aires. Jamie is a recording Engineer, Matt is a live sound engineer, Robin has a tonne of other projects and does remixes and writes music almost constantly. I play in a band called Her Name Is Calla, release records for other people through our ‘Robot Needs Home’ label, put on shows and tour manage other bands. We all do a lot!

Thanks a lot for your time.  Anything else you'd like to add for your fans in India? 

How crazy is it that we have fans in India? Or indeed anywhere else in the world. We’re part of a relatively small musical community in our home town and it’s always absolutely overwhelming to hear from people thousands of miles away who are in to what we do. Thanks for being awesome.

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