Interview with Lee Heir
So how has your latest compilation album Art/Facts gone so far with fans then?
Well it’s a compilation that we’ve had online for a while – it covers the period of 2014-2018 up to the band’s last single ‘In Summer’ – but we discovered some original masters that were previously in really bad shape, so we remastered them, added some rare live tracks and also I did a lovely interview with my good friend the musician Dan Heathcote from a band called Zadkiel UK. I wish we could have fit the whole thing on the CD but we had so much material that we ran out of space! So as I answer this question, the CD is about to drop so I don’t know yet! But most people enjoyed the singles we put out so I hope they enjoy the rarities too!
Tell us something about the release no one knows?
I recorded the interview whilst wearing a velvet skirt… Just kidding! Well, I’ve dedicated the CD to my Uncle David Stevenson, and the quote inside the sleeve is a tribute to him as I took it from the booklet that was handed out at his funeral last year.
If you could work with any band on a new song, who would it be and why?
I just heard the Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb on the smooth radio station, so collaborating with a great legendary vocalist like that would be alright!
Can you tell us about the meaning behind the main tracks on Art/Facts?
‘Bye Bye’ and ‘To Be Or Not To Be’ are relationship songs about wondering if to stay or not be with someone you really care about, stuff like ‘IOU’ and ‘Flatline’ are songs about not wasting your life, and ‘In Summer’ is a love song, about missed chances and regrets too, but still going for it like nothing bad has happened. You only live once!
What tours do you have coming up, and what can you tell us about them?
We’ve cancelled all tour plans due to COVID-19, and won’t be rescheduling, so our last show was back in March to around 700 on a massive stage in Chesterfield in a beautiful listed hall called The Winding Wheel. The show was a mess sound-wise but I loved being on that massive stage.
What venue did you most look forward to playing the most, and why?
Supporting on the Electric Six tour shows at the o2 venues was always great fun, and their fans seemed to like our wildness on stage, they got what we were all about I think. Some fans had followed them all the way from Scotland and Australia all over Europe and said that we were the best support band they’d seen. They also said our drummer at the time was shit and we needed to get shot of him because we were great! So I knew that they were being honest about what they said. Ha ha.
What else can we expect from in 2020?
We hope to get the new songs from our sessions at RatCat Studios in Nottingham out there, so we have a solid track by Chris D. Bramley (our guitarist) called ‘Sorry’, and I will be joining him in Holland, Belgium and West Germany for his upcoming solo tour in the Winter (it was postponed because of COVID-19), so we always have lots of fun. The other song is a blues rock tune entitled Jeff Took A Trip which is a tribute to our last official bassist Jeff Boydon and a mix of his travels to his home town of Scunthorpe and me imagining him being blown away with a shotgun Michael Caine style in the film Get Carter! What a way to go!
Prime (UK Band) ‘Art / Facts’ Playlist out now:
open.spotify.com/album/2GocqlOhEgW5hoL4exwxrJ
Prime (UK Band) CD Digipak ‘Art/Facts’ out now:prime4.bandcamp.com/album/art-facts-2014-2018-cd-digipak-pre-order-uk-postal-price
Official Prime (UK Band) ‘In Summer’ Music Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaZO5ZiFWA4
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