What inspired you to first start making music? And how did you come to be in your current incarnation? Or if you prefer, a brief bio about you.
The Lazytrains play music from the extended family of the Blues, wandering between rock ‘n’ roll/garage/swing/soul/something-like-that.
They have a feelgood vibe going on, they laugh (but they are not to be laughed at), they play lives (very live ones indeed) and like serious jokes. They play their own material, plus various covers (that usually turn out being unrecognizable), and they ‘ve been playing quite a few shows in the past years.
The five people that comprise the band have quite different backgrounds, reasons and inspirations to play music. That creates tensions (mainly musical ones) that bring about the special character and the sound of the band.
The (Lazy-)train set off 6 years ago. After various line up changes, right now the train travels with Maria Ioannidou (vocals/kazoo) as a hostess and Orestis Zyrinis (sax) serving in the dining car. The locomotive is driven by Eleni Fiseki (drums), the stoker Lefteris Katsas (bass) tirelessly shovels up coal and Dimitris Kontonis (guitar) sweats carrying luggage for the passengers.
There is no ticket inspector 🙂
Provide us with some info about your latest release…
“The sound of the blues” is the first track written by the Lazytrains, so it got to be the first one to be released (and to have a video clip). In a way, it is very representative of the band: It has “blues” in the title, and has certain blues musical elements, but it is definitely not a blues. Just like the band. It is a bluesy band, but it is not a blues band.
Which ones would you consider your main influences both music-wise & non-music-wise?
That’s a tough one. We ‘re five very different people. If we had to answer with non-musical influences, that ’d get too long of a text to be published 🙂
Let’s just name Chet Baker, the Clash, Louis Jordan, Tom Waits, Tuxedomoon, Billie Holiday, Art Ensemble of Chicago, John Coltrane, sci-fi literature, Jim Jarmusch’s movies, beat poetry, Terence McKenna and the athenian underground.
Basically, our influences are our experiences, that is, our influences are our lives.
In what way does your sound differ from the rest genre-related artists/bands and why should we listen to your music? In other words, how would you describe your sound?
Our sound is difficult to define-and that’s a good reason to listen to our music, already 😀
It wanders between genres, styles and influences and we have no problem with that. We guess that if our sound were a state, it ‘d be a multicultural one. In the broader sense it is somewhere between the blues, fiercely blended with rock ‘n’ roll and garage, with many jazz, pop, funk and fusion elements, plus a twist of funk, adorned with un-earthy female vocals… And then we pass all this through the filter of what each one of us is… plus, lately we ‘ve been flirting a lot with foot stompin’ soul music.
Please name your 3 desert islands albums, movies & books…
Led Zeppelin I
Chet Baker-baby breeze
Pat Metheny-beyond the Missouri sky
Party at the 13th floor-Trypes
Three Imaginary Boys-The Cure
The Big Lebowski
Oops, that’s not three, but we ‘re five, so, you know… 😉
Do you prefer studio or performing live and why?
We definitely prefer performing live because the interaction with the audience is a big part of the Lazytrains experience.
Plus, the live situation keeps us in a kind of high intensity state of being, where the energy has to keep flowing, no matter what. So there is always the element of surprise, improvisation, instant communication and response to the moment. This immersion in the now can be called the quintessence of existence.
Plus, it’s fun AF.
Is there any funny-unique story you would like to share with us, always in relation to your music ‘career’?
We were heading to Naxos island, to play a festival. Stefanos, the guitarist, overslept and missed the boat, so he had to improvise his coming to the island… This created a nice opportunity for him to terrorize everyone with the prospect of not making it there… On top of that, while aboard the ship we found out that Lefteris had the brilliant idea of surprising everybody by bringing a bass with many fancy features and obscure knobs that (in principle) would work wonders for our sound… Well, they didn’t. The problem is that he hadn’t used for years and trying it on this particular gig was somewhat of a tricky decision… Needless to say, the bass turned out to be next to unusable. And of course Naxos was not the best place to fix it or find replacement parts… So we ended up asking around the island and improvising fixes using wooden skewers and fishing gear…
Which track of your own would you point out as the most unique and why?
Each one of us would answer differently. Let’s not get into a question that could break our band apart 😀
Would you like to share with our readers your future plans?
We are preparing a full-length album that will be cut in vinyl, ‘coz we like vinyl and it smells great.
And, of course, we carry on playing shows, because we mainly see ourselves as a live act. This band for us is like a relationship and live shows for us are like sex. We wouldn’t want to live without sex-without live shows, that is…
Free question!!! (Ask yourself a question) you wish to answer and haven’t been given the opportunity…
Who would you like to share the stage with?
Well, since we sadly can’t share the stage with Morphine, we might say… The Bellrays!
Curated by: Christos Doukakis
Recommended listening:
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