London six-piece Auntie aren’t the most obvious band on paper. With members from everywhere from China to Milton Keynes and the countryside, their live set features banjo, sax, and both electric and acoustic guitars all at once – which somehow clicks into something unified. After meeting in their first year at Goldsmiths, they played their first gig a year ago and have since jumped to the Windmill’s famed New Music Monday and gigs across the London circuit, quickly becoming one of the capital’s most exciting under-the-radar names. We met them in the Sebright Arms smoking area to talk about London’s community of bands to dreams of touring Asia and and their ideal celebrity auntie.
When and how did Auntie form?
Eddie: Me, Bobby and Tim were all friends in first year of university – we’re in second year now. We used to go to his house and mess about, and we wrote a song about John Pork. It was actually like, well, hang on a second here – it sounded really good. Then we kind of guessed who would sound good, because we hadn’t heard most people yet but we knew what people played so we invited everyone else to join.
Bailey: I remember you guys asking me to jam, we did it and then after you just said, “oh, so what are we naming our band then?” like really seriously.
Eddie: Oh yeah we forgot to even bring up that it was a band.
Where did the name come from?
Tim: We call Zaza auntie because she’s older than us. It’s kind of like a Chinese thing, she’s the auntie.
Bailey: And she used to cook for us all the time. She was so generous and just like a family member.
If you could have a celebrity or musician as your auntie, who would you pick?
Eddie: It’s got to be someone that’s nice but a bit off the rails.
Bobby: Joni Mitchell?
Tim: Patti Smith?
Bailey: Is Mary Berry too old to be an auntie?
Bobby: She’d be a great auntie. Mary Berry or Patti Smith.
Was there a moment when you realised Auntie would be more than just a side project?
Bobby: For me it was probably the first rehearsal. I’d never really played this kind of set-up before, I’m from quite a rural part of Somerset and had played in really small bands, like three-pieces. We’ve got banjo and sax, and in that first rehearsal I heard the sax and I was like, yeah, this needs to be a thing. And then the first gig cemented it even more.
Bailey: Yeah, playing with six people is quite a lot but it all just happens so naturally. I don’t feel like anyone’s ever playing over each other or doing too much. It just clicked so quickly that I was like, alright, I guess this is a thing now.
You’re all at Goldsmiths, what’s it like balancing the band with uni?
Eddie: It’s not a very hard course. They don’t give us much, so it’s alright. There’ll be one month where it gets intense – all our deadlines at the same time. That’s going to be next month for us. The rest of the year, it’s fine.
Bobby: It’s funny, we said in April we’re going to take a step back and focus on deadlines, and now we’ve booked four or five gigs. We should probably focus on uni a bit more, but it’s usually fine to be honest.
What are some of your main musical influences?
Bobby: The first one I’ll go in with is Ugly. We used to listen to them and were like, oh, we want to start making something like this. Really early on, before we were even a band, there were a few of us saying that. So that’s one of the biggest ones. We saw them live very early on and were just like, yeah, this is sick – that inspired us.
Zaza: I don’t really listen to band music, so all the references are from gigs and who we play with.
Bobby: I saw Drive Your Plow a couple of times early when I moved here and that definitely inspired some of the guitars in our tracks. And Wish were the first band we played with and they’re really tight as well.
Are there any non-musical influences – films, books, art?
Bobby: I’ve always been a big fan of soundtracks, so Pulp Fiction stands out for me, I think it’s that Urge Overkill song. John Travolta, Grease. I was a bit of a musical kid, that’s how I learned to sing. I did musicals back in secondary – I hated it but my mum forced me.
Eddie: For films, I’ve got to give a shout-out to O Brother, Where Art Thou?. It’s the reason I got a banjo in the first place. There’s one song in it, Man of Constant Sorrow, and I loved it. I must have been about 15 when I first saw it. I asked for a banjo for Christmas, and now I play that in a band, so that’s really important for me.
Do you think living in London influences your sound?
Tim: Yeah definitely. We’re from different places too, Bobby’s from the countryside.
Bailey: I’m from Swindon.
Zaza: I’m from Chengdu, China.
Eddie: I’m from Milton Keynes.
Bailey: I think because it’s such a chaotic scene, and things are so overlapping, it all kind of comes together.
Eddie: Like Zaza was saying, we get influenced by bands we play with and because there are so many good bands in London, it definitely boosts where you’re at. There are so many people you can play with, so just being here is really helpful for me.
How important is that sense of community for you?
Zaza: It’s really important. I started a label called BabyFive with a coursemate, and last year we did a gig in Manchester with Bobby’s friends. That gig really reminded me how important community is.
Eddie: If there wasn’t a community, we literally wouldn’t be able to do anything we do. Every opportunity we’ve had has come from other people helping us and giving us favours. For example, after New Music Monday, the next Windmill gig we played was because Love Tutorial invited us. You wouldn’t be able to do it without your friends or the musical community.
Bobby: Also networking and getting to know all the bands you play with is really important. Just speaking to everyone builds things up, it’s new friendships with bands you’d never have met otherwise.
Bailey: I always feel really lucky that when I play, I can just watch the bands after. It’s great. It’s a free ticket, sometimes a free pint, and we’ve been blown away by a lot of bands.
Why did you release Bodycam as the first single?
Bailey: That was the one where people started singing along, like our friends.
Eddie: It’s probably the most catchy song – it’s got a lot of hooks. That was a live recording we did in Goldsmiths’ studio, and we wanted something with energy. It builds up a lot and has loads of layers at the end, so it worked well.
Bobby: We wanted to capture that live and get it out there before recording it professionally. A lot of bands play loads of gigs and wait a while before releasing anything – that’s kind of the trajectory we’re on. We want to record demos and eventually something really polished that we’re happy with before putting it everywhere. And Bandcamp and SoundCloud are great, especially for small bands.
At your first gig there was no banjo…
Eddie: Yeah, there wasn’t. When we first started, I basically couldn’t play the banjo that well – I used to play maraca in one of them.
Bobby: I forgot we had that up. That gig was quite scuffed, only one or two months into rehearsing. Eddie and I wrote loads of songs and quickly mashed them together and played at the Old Dip. It wasn’t too intimidating, we had a lot of uni friends there.
Eddie: I’ve only just started feeling like I can actually play my instrument. I can play guitar and I sing, but the banjo – although I’ve had it a while – I’ve only really started playing it since the band’s been going. It was kind of a novelty at first, but we realised it actually sounds quite nice as another layer.
How have you developed since that first gig?
Eddie: We’ve learnt a lot about the gigging scene. For example, at soundcheck we used to be quite nervous and didn’t really know what a lot meant.
Bailey: A lot more confidence.
Bobby: We’ve all developed on our instruments as well. Playing so many gigs has made us really tight. We’ve been saying yes to almost everything, and that’s helped a lot – building chemistry as well. We’re all good friends and spend loads of time together.
Where would you like to be in a year?
Zaza: I want to bring my band back to Asia.
Eddie: That would be so good, like a China tour?
Zaza: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia.
Bobby: Realistically, a small headline or support tour would be amazing. If we carry on like this, in a year we’ll be pretty happy. If we keep gigging and writing, things will naturally move forward.
Eddie: And we do want to go to China – like we said, Zaza’s from there, so that’d be really cool.
Any bucket list goals?
Bobby: Festivals is probably the biggest one. Green Man is a bit of a bucket list for us, or Glastonbury.
Eddie: Yeah, if we could get one of those introducing slots at a festival, that’d be awesome. Like the Glastonbury competition or Green Man. That’s probably our main goal for next year, or whenever.
Words by Donovan Livesey