Sprocks of Ages

He starts by hitting me up with the single greatest reason I’ve ever heard for being in a band: “We wanted to make going out that bit more fun. We thought there’d be more of a buzz if we were playing while we were partying.”

Most bandmates become friends out of necessity but blues-rockers The Hot Sprockets did things the other way around. Singer and guitarist Wayne Soper is detailing how he turned five bezzie mates into one of Ireland’s most exciting new acts.
“When we were in school, Tim really wanted to play guitar and be in a band, so we bought him a guitar for his birthday. He couldn’t even play at this stage – he only started playing a couple of weeks before our first gig!”
Soper continues: “...and then Franky was like ‘Awh, what’ll I do?’ and his dad had a couple of harmonicas at home so he started playing the harmonica.”
And it really was that simple. They even had their name long before they decided to start making music together.
“Sprocket was the name of that dog in Fraggle Rock. You remember that big woolly dog?”
It’s clearly very important to him that I remember this.
Now with an estimated 250 gigs under their belts, these five young blues hounds from the dirty south (of Dublin) might just be the hardest working boys in the city. They use all 10 hands for clapping and all five voices for singing (well, drummer Adrian or “Age” only joins in when he’s “really into it”).
Soper and Tim Cullen share the role of frontman, singing in strained southern drawls of Followill accuracy. And with influences this primeval (Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson), they’ve got the southern rhythm down pat.
“We all love blues, we always go back to the old music, it’s the old music that got us going and that turns us on. A lot of bands have those same influences but don’t wear it on their sleeve as much. I think the indie bands, a lot of them have lost where they came from.”
I suggest that they might get slagged by their peers for sounding so distinctly American. “Well, that blues sound is closer to the Irish sound than any of the indie stuff. Traditional Irish and traditional blues are historically connected.”
In their two year lifespan, the performance that trumped the other 249, Soper tells me, was the launch of their Country Dirt EP in the Button Factory last year.
“We had the EP recorded and thought, ‘Let’s package this shit up and release it!’ So we put loads of work into the launch and we really went for it. You know, when you’re a Dublin band on your own in the city it can be hard to fill up a joint.”
I’d heard about this infamous launch already – there’d been more than a few tales of punters jumping up on stage and scaling the amps. Presumably their CDs survived the stampede. “They’re actually nearly all gone ‘cause we keep giving them to people,” Soper laughs. “But it’s pretty sweet, we can use them as cash at the bar.”
Other contenders for Sprockets career highlights include supporting The Zutons in Vicar St. and a memorable gig with The View in The Ambassador.
“We’d only been playing about a year and we were like ‘Holy fuck!’. We were shitting it, we were used to doing little pubs, like, but it went really, really well.”
Their debut EP, the aptly-named Country Dirt boasts sounds reminiscent of authentic vintage blues as well as rabid blowout honky tonk.
“Tim’s lyrics get really dirty – he just thinks it’s funny, like. He wrote a song called ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ about Age getting laid ('So I told her who I am/And she got right in the back o’ my van').”
And Age did get laid. I asked.
“It can get pretty perverse. Tim’s mad for the dirty, skanky lyrics.”
With song titles like ‘Hoochies’ and ‘Cherrypopper’, I decide it best not to ask for examples.
“I write more about funny stuff that’s happened to us. Like ‘Solid Gold’ – we were at the Electric Picnic and you know those fake fur jackets? We all bought them and started walking around in them like ‘Eeeuuuu, check out my solid gold!’”
Tunes like these pretty much sum up a band who admit to making music solely for their own amusement. And if you think that’s romantic, just wait ‘til you hear what Soper and Co. have planned for the next 50 years: “All the stuff we love, a lot of the old school musicians didn’t get big until they were 70 years old. That’ll be us, sitting around playing when we’re mad old, like Seasick Steve!”.