A few days ago I had the pleasure of conducting a short and informal interrogation of sorts on our upcoming headline performers from Glasgow; the band known as Weatherman. The conversation was held through Instagram DMs, and has been transcribed and reformatted as follows:
So - admin of the Weatherman band Instagram page talk to me: are you THE weatherman? Who is The Weatherman? What does this name mean?
Hahaha it’s all of us including manager, it’s a lucky dip.
To whom am I speaking currently?
You were speaking to another member but I’ve just logged on - Matt
Are you the weatherman Matt? And if not, talk to me about the origin of this name.
I’m not the weatherman, I'm not sure if there is a weatherman. Louis (guitarist/lyricist) came up with after many failed, collective deliberation sessions. He probably has a good reason for it that I don't know or have forgotten, but I do know I liked it when I heard it.
Hi (Louis here) the name came after a relatively lengthy process of me and Charlie texting each other potential band names in Autumn of 2022. There is no ‘weatherman’, but ‘weather’ or not people want to read into it is up to them.
Autumn of 2022? So that’s a few years you guys have been a full band or has the lineup changed? What brought you all together?
Lineup don’t change. We strong together weather men. Brought together by love of weather. Love of rain, sun, wind, snow.
Does each member have a weather? For example, frontman is sun and bassist is rain for obvious reasons?
All weather. All man. All of the time. But drums defo wind cause he let rip 24/7.
Wicked. I like that. You guys seem really united and strong together, how does that pit you against your rivals in Glasgow? Is there a friendly competition or is the community all supportive?
Glasgow community very strong. So many good bands… PVC, Escher, Milange, Panda Car
Shoutout the Glaswegians! Now these are you peers but let’s talk delve more into musical influences, your music has received comparisons to bands such as BCNR and Maruja, would you cite them as influential to your sound? And if not who?
Influences range from Randy Newman to Dungeon Synth.
Ah Randy Newman! You’ve got a friend in me!
That’s clearly a diverse range of influences, are you planning on bedding leftfield at any point in the future with your upcoming music to try new sounds or do you feel like you’ve found what works best for you?
It’s more fun to play around with different stuff. The more diverse the better I say!
That’s a promising mindset I look forward to hearing what you’ll be cooking up, have you got a game plan for releases? Can we expect an LP on the way?
We’re very skint at the moment so nothing coming up immediately. No game plan sadly.
It would be nice to get signed first. So, we’re just trying not to be complacent and keep moving forward as a band. Also, BCNR and Maruja are both great and I think the music they put out has opened up some fertile ground for bands generally to get more creative and push their music in a wider array of directions.
Speaking of “pushing” you’re a band that’s been around a few years, in that time what have been the biggest adversities you’ve had to face? The biggest hurdles, challenges and such? Give me 3 band struggles.
Matt has a cuckoo alarm clock set on his phone that has been problematic when I’ve had to share a room with him. We suspect a shadowy organisation is manipulating our minds and music (not sure tho). Louis struggles to see the bright side of life.
In all seriousness, having time to collaborate and flesh out new tracks is a commodity for us at the moment. Being 4th year students money also poses a problem for recording the tracks and getting them how we want them to sound. We really want our sound to be distinct from other bands that are currently doing incredibly well. There’s definitely a lot of imposter syndrome-esque feeling to that aspect as we’re a small band and being compared to similar sounds is inevitable, yet appreciated. - Matt and Eoin
I appreciate that guys, lastly give me 3 reasons why people should be excited for your upcoming gig, I’m on the way to see the smile today; what are you lot doing better than good old Thom and co?
I hope you enjoy the smile! That’s tricky. In terms of doing something ‘better’, I guess it’s inevitable that we’re making music at a time where people like Thom York and Johnny Greenwood are firmly part of the musical foundation that bands can refer to for ideas. Hopefully, we will be better at being ‘newer’ as the cabinet of inspiration is stocked high.
You should be excited to see us if a) you enjoy live music. We’re going to do our best to play well and keep y’all swell - and the support acts are great!
B) We’ll hopefully have some new songs (all new if you’ve never seen us (bonus))
C) We’re excited. So it will be great to see people there.
Cheers for talking to me lads, earth, wind, snow etc, been a pleasure and good luck for your gig!
Thank you!
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