HotWax
Momentum is building for HotWax. Their debut EP A Thousand Times has been out for a few months, and they are travelling all over playing gigs like Rebel Fest in Newport, Wales, Mad Cool in Madrid, and Visions Festival in London. They were supporting Sea Girls at the O2 Academy Oxford, La Route Du Rock in Saint-Malo, France, Away from Home Festival in Bussoladomani, Italy, then All Points East Festival in London before the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Strokes, then headlining the BBC Music Introducing stage at Reading Festival and then supporting Royal Blood. Plus, mentions in NME and BBC 6 Music.
If you thought reading that list was tiring, imagine doing it for real!
When and how did your interest in making music start?
Tallulah. My dad is a musician; he built this workspace into a recording studio in St Leonards. When I was younger, I was always really into art and music, but I was into guitar music. My mum introduced me to Hole’s album Live Through This, some Blondie songs, and lots of other music; that got me interested. Before hearing that music, I had never really liked heavy stuff.
My parents would have people around, and bands played in the garden. I honestly hated it so much.
I was like quite an anxious child. I remember crying, going to the neighbour’s house to apologise for the noise. I just hated heavy music. Then something changed; being in my room and listening to it more and more, I started to love it.
“I was about eight when I started playing the guitar. I would always play in my room; I had a few friends who were into music, we made little bands, but we never played outside of my room.”
Tallulah.
Only a few people in my year at school in Rye were into guitar music or bands. So it was easy to find Lola. Our music teacher put us together. It felt great to have things in common with someone else; we love playing together. We started playing in the school music rooms but then moved on to gigging while we were young.
Me and Lola were about to do our GCSEs; we had started to revise, but then it was locked down, so we dodged GCSEs and went straight to music college. So we had it easy.
Lola. When I was around nine or 10, I started to want to play the guitar. I wasn’t really into music. My family are all musicians, so I picked up a guitar. I started lessons with a guy in Rye; he showed me some playlists, and I got into some classic rock songs, the sort you learn in music lessons, if you know what I mean.
By the time I went to secondary school, I had decided to play bass. Our school was encouraging with music at the start, but as time went on with less funding, less time or effort was given to the arts. So we were at the tail end of supportive focus on music and other stuff.
We would get put in various bands for school concerts in summer, Christmas, or whatever occasion. I just wanted to play music, and that’s how you learn by playing in various bands. That’s how I met Tallulah; when our music teacher put us together in a band when we were 13.
We played on the pier in Hastings for the first time as an all-girl band; there were four of us in that band. Since that day, we’ve had at least a gig most weeks apart from the lockdowns. We’ve just been so lucky.
Alfie. I come from a little town just outside Brighton. Every day after school, I would go to my neighbours to be looked after, and all of their kids played instruments. I started playing the drum kit there and enjoyed doing it. So I started having lessons regularly.
Locally, there was a large collective of bands run by this guy. He would put kids in bands to play gigs every week. So I played gigs in bands from age seven until I was 17.
After finishing secondary school, I went to college in Brighton to do BIMM, a music course, where I met the girls. I was the year above.
Lola. We started our first band in 2017 and became HotWax in 2019. And then Alfie joined in 2021 when we started taking it more seriously.
Tallulah. We needed a drummer and had heard of Alfie, but we hadn’t met yet; we asked him, and luckily, we made friends easily.
Lola. We didn’t even ask him in person. We sent him a message on Instagram.
Alfie. Our first gig together was supporting Kid Kapichi at the White Rock Theatre, Hastings, which was quite a big one.
What milestones stand out to you from your time together so far?
Lola. We supported Kid Kapichi in 2018 with a previous band, The Kiffs, and they were doing an EP release at The Carlisle. Then after lockdown, there’s been loads of gigs too many to remember.
Things took off when we met Clare, our manager, and we got signed this January. We’ve been gigging so much this year; this is the most gigs we’ve ever done. We’ve been supporting various bands; we supported Supergrass, as well as doing our gigs. We went up to Manchester for the first time, and this year, we’ve travelled to France and Italy; we’ve played festivals and have some big gigs coming up.
Tallulah. After music college, Lola and I worked at Goat Ledge in St Leonards for a while, and that’s where we met Clare. I’d be working on the till, and Clare would come over and chat. Then we found out she had worked with so many cool bands. Then one day, we went for a coffee with her.
Lola. At that time, we didn’t know what a manager did. But we needed someone to help us. We were terrible at replying to emails and any offers that came our way. We need to be more organised. It happened naturally, and we got signed by an independent record label Marathon Artists, soon after that.
How do you develop songs together?
Lola. That has changed since we got signed because we now have time pressure. The first EP came together over five years with the writing and recordings.
Tallulah. The process now is usually Lola, or I will think of a riff, and sometimes we’ll put that together with lyrics. Or go straight into rehearsal. Often it starts from writing just with a guitar, or recently we’ve been doing quite a lot of stuff with Logic Pro.
“At first, I never really love a new song, not for a while, but saying that when we’ve been doing the same set for some time, it’s great to change things up!”
Lola.
Lola. We like to keep the structure and subject of our songs exciting and new. Otherwise, you can revert to the same patterns with similar results.
Alfie. We like to gig each song a lot before they’re recorded, so naturally, the songs evolve through playing them.
Tallulah. When we started HotWax, I’d never sung before; it was a lot more instrumental and psychedelic.
Lola. Back in the start, we’d be on stage in our jeans and whatever. Now we enjoy dressing up, which becomes part of the band’s aesthetic and who we are. Being on stage can be an act, but only sometimes. We put so much energy into it; no one is always that confident.
“The new songs we’ll be sitting on, sometimes it feels like for ages, and then we’ll start playing them when it gets closer to releasing that new stuff.”
Alfie.
You have been posting dates for upcoming gigs, images and videos from places you’ve played, and you have released an EP and your video for Drop recently; you are keeping busy!
Lola. We had All Points East in London on the same line-up with The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and the Away From Home Festival in Italy, curated by Louis Tomlinson from One Direction, which was cool. Sorry, I’m mixing up the order, but you get the gist.
Tallulah. In October and November, we’ll be supporting Royal Blood around the UK and in America on 14 dates along the west coast, it’s pretty scary, but it will be amazing.
Lola. We are playing our EP, A Thousand Times, released earlier this summer and lots of older stuff. But now we’ve written and recorded a new EP,
which isn’t out yet, and we’re writing new songs.
Alfie. It can be disorientating, we’ll play our older songs at gigs; they are only old songs to us; because they’ve only just been released. But we do play
some new songs.
Lola. You want to hold some of it back, but it’s hard because you want to share all our new songs.
Tallulah Sim-Savage
Vox/Guitar
Lola Sam
Bass
Alfie Sayers
Drums
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