From left to right: Joel, Tom, Steve, Rhys
They’re one of our favourite bands and very good friends whom we’ve covered a million times, including a massive interview with frontman, Rhys Jones, where his own fans asked questions themselves. So possibly everything that you’ve wanted to know has been answered. “Come on! ‘Where does the name Good Shoes come from?’”, Rhys challenged SUPERSWEET with a big grin, “That’s the sort of question we’d get asked”. My God, sir, you’ve been unexpectedly forced to DJ our gig and done everything we could possibly think of. So today, like it or not, you’re simply going to tell us what Good Shoes have been up to during their down time.
SS: So you’re back to your day job then?
Rhys: We’re rehearsing Monday to Thursday every week and we have three days off where we just write new songs. We’ve got 12 songs, and we’re going to demo in February. They’re just like the old album (Think Before You Speak) but a bit different.
SS: Is this a theme to it?
Rhys: Basically, It’s a whole concept album about the girl I broke up with a while ago. So it’s not a concept album but…
SS: Surely you’re making this up?
Rhys: No! Serious! Every song’s about this girl, we were hanging out a bit recently and then but we’re really good friends though. Basically, you go out with somebody for so long what else do you have to write about? All my relationship problems have just been with her. So it’s all about that. It’s like a diary to get down all the things I was thinking about, being like, “Oh stuff’s going wrong,” and you try to resolve it. Normally you’d just resolve in your head or you write in a diary but I write lyrics. Probably she doesn’t like it at all.
SS: Does she know?
Rhys: Yeah, I was going out with her for two and a half years, she knows what I do. Like in the first album I wrote about loads of previous relationships I’ve had.
SS: But the first one has loads that are social commentary.
Rhys: Yeah, but I’ve stopped going out so I can’t write an album like that any more (laughs).
SS: Why don’t you go out any more then?
Rhys: I don’t know, I do, I was on a big night out on Tuesday but I don’t like it any more. I used to get trashed all the time at clubs but when you get older you don’t really do stuff like that, you hang out with your friends, you know.
SS: Any exciting producer to work with this time?
Rhys: We’re just writing at the moment, I chatted Erol Alkan the other day and I’d like to send demos to him because I hear his Long Blondes recordings, I heard his recording of ‘Flakes’ by Mystery Jets and I think it’s brilliant.
SS: Is he your favourite?
Rhys: No, but I like what he’s doing at the moment. I haven’t heard much of his stuff, it just sounds really nice the way it’s recorded. Producers are very important, like our first producer Per Sunding, he just got us to do good performances and he just made it enjoyable time. Whereas if you get producers that are dickheads then it just wouldn’t be fun, would it, right? But we’re recording with Stephen Street (Blur, The Smiths, Kaiser Chiefs) a little bit too. I like him a lot.
SS: How do you go about writing this time round?
Rhys: Yeah, now we’re just taking songs to each other and play there. Mainly Steve (Leach, guitar) and I come up with the songs. Joel’s (Cox, bass) come up with a couple of them; Tom’s (Jones, drums) come up with one [for the second album]. But Steve and I used to write just me and him, and take it to everybody else and play to them. Now it’s like I’ll have a guitar part or I’ll have a verse and a chorus and we’ll work out the solo or intro.
SS: When are you planning to release this?
Rhys: We’ve been together for two and a half years, it would be good to have another album out within a year.
SS: Do you find the process of the label’s marketing plans always slows everything down?
Rhys: Yeah, only if you’re first band, but if it’s your second album they’ll want to get your album out as soon as they can.
SS: You know lots about the business now then?
Rhys: A bit, it’s all complicated though, with lawyers and hassle. But we know enough to know what we want now.
SS: Which is?
Rhys: I can’t tell you that (smiles). It’s really boring! (Pauses) …Alright, what we want is a wad to keep us going for two years salary-wise. We’ve been planning out America and England and Europe and Japan with a release date, record and for a year just touring. We want to have a really firm plan. I don’t know, I just know what radio pluggers I want to do us, I know what TV people I’d like to do us. All that crap, it’s boring… (laughs) if people are reading this they’ll be like, “What, come off it!”
SS: No they won’t. It’s a lifestyle piece! So now we’re going to talk about something else. What else do you do?
Rhys: One of the things I’ve been thinking recently is that making things is what I’m really into, when we finish doing music maybe I’ll get into music videos and doing illustrations. I think maybe going back to uni to do ceramics or woodwork.
SS: Actually, we haven’t really prepared any non-music questions for you…
Rhys: Come on… Let’s see… “You do the artwork for your band, so what illustrators do you like?” (Pauses) Well, funny you should ask that because I really quite like illustration (laughs). I like Michael Gillette who’s one of the best illustrators in the world, and Rob Ryan. And I like Kate Moross and I like a blog called It’s Nice That. For the second album, because I did all the work for the first album and all the singles and I was thinking maybe I’ll do the album cover but then for every single, just get someone I like to do the illustration, like get Rob Ryan to do one cover, get friends of mine to do covers and I get the free piece of original piece of art by illustrator I like. I’ll have to tell the label that this is my plan!
SS: Their styles aren’t so much like your own illustrations, yours is simple and linear.
Rhys: I draw in lines and in just black and white, I’d like to be able to do different style but then you can only draw in one style, you know what I mean? It’s hard to do different styles. What I like in artists is different to what I draw myself though, I like simple things but those guys are really cool, and I’m very particular about what illustrations I like!
SS: There you go, our semi-lifestyle chat!
Rhys: (Smiles) Very. Whatever. Phew! (Laughs) Thank you!
Photography: Emli Bendixen