Lee ‘Lizzy’ Evans – Hangfire – Interview Exclusive
Written by Matt Phelps
Sunday, 05 February 2012 04:30
When my Uber Rock colleague Matt Blakout fell off the Tigertailz stage and into the Hangfire line up I found myself with a new band to follow. Blakout’s new boyz have been building up a steady following over the last few years and with their long awaited album ‘Shoot The Crow’ finally about to see release I thought now would be the perfect time to catch up with lead guitarist and founder member Lee “Lizzy” Evans for the lowdown on the Welsh four piece. Read on for ‘…Crow’ based info and a bit of Hangfire history…
Right, Lee, we need to introduce Hangfire to the world!
That would be great, let the band storm the world.
Let’s get on then, I guess first you could introduce Hangfire to us. Who’s in the band and how did you all come to be?
Right, well Hangfire consists of Max Rhead who’s on lead vocals, we’ve got Matt Blakout, Ex-Tigertailz, he’s on the drums. We’ve got Bobby Goo on bass and myself, Lizzy Evans, on lead guitar and backing vocals. Basically we started off around 2008. Myself and Max used to play in another band some time ago and we met up one day and decided it would be a great idea to get something together and basically that’s how Hangfire came about really. It took some time trying to find a rhythm section, drums and bass, but I think we finally found the culprits when we got Matt and Mr Goo in the band. We started writing new material and knocking ideas around that we already had from the past and I think we’ve come out with some killer tracks, all of which now make up the new album which comes out at the end of this week called ‘Shoot The Crow’.
‘Shoot The Crow’ has been a while coming though, hasn’t it? I believe the video for ‘Bodies’ came out at the end of 2010. How come there’s been such a delay in getting the album out? It was originally supposed to be out a lot sooner wasn’t it?
Yeah it was. Well, actually when we did the first EP, which was ‘Confessions’, we had a different drummer on there, Aaron. He was my brother actually. He sadly passed away in 2009. So we had some tracks already lined up for ‘Shoot The Crow’ when Aaron was in the band and when he passed away we didn’t really know whether we were gonna carry on or whether Hangfire was gonna disband and we’d go our separate ways. But then we found Matty and Bob and we started getting into the studio and writing again. We did the video for ‘Bodies’ and I suppose the reason it took so long after that was because there were some new tracks coming out in the writing. We were sort of throwing some stuff away and putting new ones in, just turning out some new ideas. Really we just wanted to get that “feel”, that Hangfire “feel” throughout the album instead of just throwing any old songs in there with any old ideas. We wanted the consistency of the album to be killer right throughout. So I’m hoping the audience will forgive us for taking so long to do this album and maybe realise why it took so long and understand that’s why the songs are as good as they are.
You just played a gig the other day at The Patriot in Crumlin, how did those new songs go down with the crowd there?
You know what, the audience in The Patriot are fantastic. We always get an excellent response, the crowd there are fantastic. The organisation there is always brilliant, we’ve always had a great welcome and warm reception. We debuted some of the tracks off the new album, we did ‘Adrenalise’ which we played live for the first time. That’s the first track off the new album. We did the new single ‘For Crying Out Loud’ which is the new video as well and also ‘Faith In Me’ and, like I said, we’ve always had a great response there and we look forward to playing there. We’re back there again at the end of February with Wratchchild.
Sounds good. I have a copy of ‘Adrenalise’ that Matt sent me, it’s a great track but when the guitar solo came in it was a “shivers down the spine” moment. So I’d like to know who are the big influences on your playing and on Hangfire in general that go towards creating your sound?
(Laughs) Well, this is a long running joke here with Hangfire, we all love anything that came out in 1987. It’s a long running joke and whenever people say “What are your influences?” we always say “1987.” It was a killer year for all the great rock music that came out back then. I can’t really speak for the others. I can only touch on a little bit on what the other guys like when it comes to influences but I know Matty is a massive Kiss fan, he also plays with DTK, Dressed To Kill. I know Kiss are a great influence on Matty. As far as Bob goes I know he grew up listening to a lot of early Sabbath. As for Max he loves Free and he’s a big Whitesnake fan. Myself? I’m heavily influenced by bands like Badlands, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers and I don’t know whether it shows massively in Hangfire’s music but I like to think that now and again we touch upon these things, you know?
Yeah. Badlands? Would that be the one with Jake E Lee?
That’s right yeah. I’ve always been a massive fan of Jake E Lee. Guitar wise I do love stuff like Jake E Lee and Gary Rossington from Skynyrd. Even some of the Eighties bands, I was influenced by Dokken and Ratt with Warren DeMartini. Also I’m a big fan of people like Ritchie Blackmore and the early Purple stuff. On the new album I’ve used a sort of Egyptian feel as well on some of the solos. There are some heavy influences but it’s right across the board really. The great thing about getting it together with Hangfire is that we’ve all roughly got the same sort of influences, we all sort of grew up listening to the same things. So when it comes to writing it makes the whole thing so much easier. It’s like we’re banging out riffs and we almost know what the next person is gonna come up with.
Like second nature to you all now?
Yeah and it’s a great feeling to have, to know that the bass player and the drummer can sort of bounce off each other as far as rhythms and grooves go. It just makes that writing process so much easier.
So what are Hangfire’s plans now that ‘Shoot The Crow’ is practically upon us? Will you be taking it out on the road?
Definitely. We’ve just played The Globe in Cardiff with a band called The Happenin’ then at the end of the month we’ll be with Wrathchild at The Patriot and we’re playing The Garage in Swansea with them as well. Then I believe we’re off to do some dates with Marseille later on, a couple months time.
Cool. Right so with the album coming out soon where is the best place for people to get it?
Well actually I’m pleased to tell everyone that doesn’t live in Wales and even those who do and have been knocking on our doors asking for copies that we’ve got the online shop up and running as of today. So check it all out, it’s all there. You can go on the Hangfire website which is http://www.hangfire-rocks.co.uk/ and the shop is up and running ready to take your credit cards and your money. All the t-shirts and the ‘Shoot The Crow’ album are there and the ‘Confessions’ EP, that’s there too.
Excellent. Well is there anything else that you’d like to add?
I’d just like to thank everyone that has supported us right up to this point in time and I hope that they continue to. We’ll do our best to keep knocking out the tunes and all the killer tracks and hopefully we’ll meet everyone on the road. We’re always up for people coming up after shows, we’re not the type of band to go running off backstage and not talking to anyone. We’re really upfront with people and try and answer any questions, if they wanna chat we’re there to have a chat. I’d also like to say thanks to the guys in the band and everyone out there for their support.
Well thank you. It was a pleasure talking to you today and I hope we’ve gone some way towards getting the Hangfire name out there to the masses.
(Laughs) Hopefully. Let’s take it to the masses!
Check out the new Hangfire video ‘For Crying Out Loud’ and then head over to
http://www.hangfire-rocks.co.uk/store.html to pick up the album, you know it makes sense!
