ARTIST/BAND: The Avenues
BASED IN: Oakwood/Wortley/Chapel Allerton/Crossgates
BAND MEMBERS:
Mike Mars - Vocals
Ed Dawson - Vocals/Guitar
Rich Stephenson - Vocals/Bass
Andy Lowe - Guitar
Max Wolstenholme - Drums
BEEN GOING SINCE: January 2005
BIOGRAPHY: The band started to play live in January 2005 as a four-piece, playing the usual Leeds venues. By December that year, after some good feed-back from people, we decided on recruiting another member, Mike Mars, to complete the sound and create more harmonies, as we're harmony addicts. Since then, we've recorded a well-received demo, supported The Cosmic Rough Riders and played more and more gigs and events. We're looking forward to a year to remember this year, which is almost a paradox.
STYLE OF MUSIC: Our style could be descibed as 'an attempt to answer the question "what makes a classic song?"'. This is because we don't want to fall out of fashion and it's hard to do that when you're never in fashion. Instead, we try to make a sound that people can enjoy no matter what their taste is, because a classic song is a classic song. Who's ever described a sunset as 'ugly'? - occasionally, when something's done right, everyone agrees - even on matters of taste.
INFLUENCES: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, John Phillips, Bob Dylan, Mark Knopfler, David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, Benny Anderson, Ben Folds, Dolly Parton, Adam Schlesinger, Jason Lytle, Paul Simon.
FAVOURITE SONG: We wished we'd written 'Happy Birthday' and had it copyrighted for obvious reasons.
BEST MOMENT SO FAR: Playing The Pack Horse at an Oxjam charity gig. It's a small upstairs room, we weren't expecting anything special, but for some reason, people were still queueing down the stairs by the time we went on. They couldn't fit anymore people in the room. It was extremely hot and sweaty, but an atmosphere we haven't seen since. We think there's something special about that little room, makes you play better.
OTHER INFO: Ed and Andy know all the world's capital cities and all American state capitals, totalling more than 350 facts. Yes we're geeks. |
