Leadfoot Tea is a one man trash ‘n’ roll band. In the style of the late great rockabilly madman Leadfoot Tea uses just a bass drum, high hat and a guitar to rock up a storm of sound! Eyeplug joined the fast lane to try and flag down this speedy main driver recently…
It started a year or so ago by messing around in my studio, trying out different mics and experimenting with recording techniques, after a few recordings I started writing more songs and decided to try it out live.
02 Where did your name come from?
The name came from firstly my love of american cars with large V8 engines and I like driving ‘em fast with a ‘leadfoot’ using lots of gas! And secondly because of my heavy leadfoot on the bass drum pedal, the Tea is well… I dunno I’ve always been Lee Tea
03 Who were your major influences and inspirations and who do you despise?
I guess my main influence would be the late great Hasil Adkins, mostly his raw sound and unhinged lyrics. Also a whole host of 40’s blues, trashy country and wierd rockabilly, anything on the trashy lo-fi side of rock‘n’roll. I dont despise anything, if I dont like it I dont listen to it!
04 What drove you to make music?
I guess getting my first electric guitar around 16 years old, I bought a cheap distortion pedal and never really looked back.
05 What can someone who has never seen you live before expect from your live shows then & possibly even now?
Well… expect a very noisy trashy sound with barely audible vocals. I’m a one man band so I try to make as much noise as I possibly can, sometimes at the expense of the music, but it makes me happy and if I’m having fun the audience usually has a good laugh at least 🙂 I guess in the future the sound will calm down a bit as I add more blues stuff to the set, or maybe not…..
06 Who writes your songs? What types of themes and subjects do you deal with?
I write all my own stuff, although most of the songs come out from jams and are sometimes a bit improvised, as I change each song from gig to gig depending on my mood. My themes are mostly cars, driving too fast, drinking to much, partying to hard, pin-ups and underpants!
07 How did your music evolved since you first began playing?
Well interestingly it started off fairly refined and laid back, in a country blues style, then it it just got wilder and crazier, I’m not really sure where it’s gonna go from here!
08 What has been your biggest challenge as a one man band? Were you been able to overcome this? If so, how?
The biggest challenge is keeping it all together on stage, it does takes a huge amount of energy just to play even a half hour set, add in a couple of pints to the equation and it all too easily goes pear shaped. Yes, I overcame it by lots of rehearsing to build up the stamina, and by not drinking before the gig, although that is the part I’m finding the hardest!
09 Do you play covers? If you could pick any song, which would you like to cover most and why?
Yes I always do at least one Hasil Adkins cover in my set, sometimes two or three! I also cover some Gravemen songs now and then. I would love to a cover of Hasil’s ‘We got a date, I need your head’ mostly cause its Haze, but also because its one of the wierdest of all his songs, just really creepy, I love it!
10 Where did you envisage the band being in five years time?
Not sure, I’m hopefully going to record and release a couple of 45’s within the year and sometime within the next five years would like to get an album out, got plenty of songs just need to get ’em down on vinyl.
11 Who would you most like to record with?
Not sure, difficult, as I’m a one man band I would be happy to record with anyone who can stand my racket.
12 What should we be expecting from Leadfoot Tea in the near future?
I got a few gigs lined up, the Gutterball Festival in Oslo in mid September, plus a couple festivals booked for next year. Once I got some records released I will do a tour or two around Europe, maybe next summer I reckon, so look out for the guy with the mask, the red shirt and real lo-fi sound, that’ll be me!
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