Underground phenomenon

Omagh quartet The Basement certainly drew the chancer’s card. Having re-located to Liverpool in 2000 (“It’s one of the first ports you come to when you go East”, explains singer John Mullin), the band have succeeded in scoring themselves some dizzyingly high profile support slots with the likes of Joe Strummer and John Squire. Chuck in a summer on the festival circuit, a deal with Deltasonic, home of band-of-the-moment, The Coral, and the support for the latter’s UK headline tour, and you’ve got a not-so rocky road to success.

“Four of us moved over from Omagh,” John says, “but our bass player left after four days. He got a nosebleed and went home. No, I’m not taking the piss. He didn’t have a head for heights and he got a nosebleed and left. Then we just fucked about in our basement room, we weren’t even called The Basement at this stage, but we hung about in this wee cellar making music. We found Graeme (bass), and we realised one day that we make ‘basement music’, as we like to call it, so that’s where we got the name.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I heard you found your bass player in a ditch.

“I heard that rumour myself. He might’ve been found in a ditch, I’m not sure.”

The aforementioned Strummer support marked a fairytale initiation for The Basement as their first ever proper gig.

“We did the Joe Strummer gig and all the old punks, they loved it. Then we did a Gomez one and they all loved it, but the John Squire crowd were the worst we’ve played to yet. They weren’t too bad, but I think we just got used to getting really shit hot receptions, and they were like, ‘We’re waiting for John Squire. Fuck off’ sort of attitude. They applauded and shit, but it wasn’t what they were used to and I thought, ‘Fuck this!’

“I’m not really a big Stone Roses fan, though,” he adds. “They’re okay like, I think they made a good record, but I always thought that that and Dark Side Of The Moon were the most overrated records I’ve ever heard. The Stone Roses apparently made the second greatest album of all time according to those 100 Greatest Album charts, which is laughable.”

In keeping with the band’s 70’s up-tempo folk sound, John cites the likes of Hank Williams, Van Morrison and Bob Dylan as major influences whilst assuring that his own vocal stylings, more than a little reminiscent of Dylan, are not contrived.

“I don’t think about it. I just write songs and I open my mouth to sing them. If people want to compare me to Bob Dylan then they can, but I don’t sit there and go, ‘I must sound like him’. It just kind of happens.”

‘Medicine Day’/‘Stuck On The Street (At Minus Ten)’, the band’s double A side single, was recorded in a loft in Liverpool by Ian Broudie of the Lightning Seeds fame – the man also responsible for knob-twiddling on labelmates The Coral’s debut album.

“I was a bit anxious at the start because I didn’t want to make a Coral record, since that’s what he’d been doing before,” reveals John. “I don’t worry about being seen as The Coral’s B Team though. Anyone with a set of ears knows that we’re completely different bands.”

Are the band nervous of how the single will be received?

“Not really, no. I don’t write songs for anybody else. If people like it, then it’s a good thing, but I don’t really care. It’s all about media fads anyway. You can sell a lot of records through fads, but you should be able to sell a lot of records off your own back, regardless of who thinks you’re the next big thing to stick a badge on. The year after that, you won’t be the next big thing anymore and they’ll take the badge off you, so I wouldn’t get too worried about it. I don’t, like. It’s a fickle world, but I’m not complaining.”