Currently on tour across the UK and Ireland with special guests Room 94 and Paighton, UK Pop heroes, Lawson are shooting their way up the iTunes charts with their latest single ‘Juliet’.
Drummer, Adam Pitts took time out of his busy tour antics to chat to Fortitude Magazine…
Hi Adam, how are you?
Really good, thanks!
You must be chuffed with how well your new single ‘Juliet’ is doing? I think it was number 3 in the iTunes chart the last time I checked?
It’s absolutely crazy! We’re really happy. For the 6th single off our début album to still be going into the top 5 is crazy!
How have you found the reaction to your music in general? ‘Cause you very quickly became one of the most talked about bands around?
It was crazy because obviously before we got signed we were touring for a good 4 years without any recognition. So for us to have received the recognition we did once we got signed felt great. And there’s still a long long way for us to go. We have very high goals we want to achieve so there’s definitely a very long way for us to go in the future.
Well, I’m sure a massive step in that direction is the support slot you guys have on Jessie J’s tour?
Yeah, we can’t wait! We’re on our own headline tour at the moment, which has been an absolute dream come true- we’ve played some massive venues and a couple of arenas. And then we go straight off this tour and straight onto the Jessie tour so it’s gonna be amazing. We’re doing two nights at the 02 in London and we’ll also be coming over to Dublin. We just can’t wait, she’s such an amazing artist and to be sharing the stage with her every single night is gonna be great!
How did it actually come about? Do you guys know Jessie or was it just that she likes your music and invited you along?
Yeah we know her quite well. We’ve done quite a lot of shows with her this summer, and we did some shows with her abroad. So we know her quite a bit and she just invited us to join her on tour and we said yes straight away ’cause it’s such an amazing opportunity and it’ll be a really fun tour.
As you said, you are on tour at the moment with support from Room 94 and Paighton- would they be up and coming bands who you think have the potential to do really well in the near future?
Yeah definitely. They’re great guys and they’re great bands. They do a really good job every night, so I wish them all the luck in the future.
Something I’ve found recently is that people tend to compare musicians and bands to other people alomost instantly. Like, I don’t know what it is but if you see a male singer/songwriter with an acoustic guitar, he automatically sounds like Ed Sheeran to a lot people! Do you guys often get compared to other bands?
You’re absolutely right! And yeah, we do a bit in the UK and Ireland, but in America and Asia and Europe, people don’t really do that as much. I think it’s quite an English/UK sort of thing to do really.
Who do you actually look up to musically? Both as a band, but also yourself as a drummer- who has inspired you?
We love bands like Maroon 5 and The Script. One Republic are obviously amazing over here at the moment. We just love proper playing bands. And then as a drummer, Ronnie Vannucci from the Killers is one of my favourite drummers and Taylor Hawkins as well from the Foo Fighters. They’re who I would say are my inspiration drumming-wise.
I’m sure being in Lawson, you’re living the dream, you get to travel and play music and everything. Are there any aspects of the job that eventually get to you? Is there ever just too much attention from fans or any downsides that just become overwhelming?
No, we actually just love every single part of what we get to do. Touring is definitely our favourite because that’s the kind of thing you dream of when you’re 10 years old and you want to be in a band and you want to tour the world and play shows every single night. So that’s definitely our favourite, but to be honest, there’s not part of what we’re doing that annoys us at all, we just love every single part of it.
In terms of your online presence- is keeping in touch with fans very important to you?
Definitely! It’s kind of how we got started and social media for us is always so important so we’ve really tried to keep that through the years that we’ve been doing this. It just makes the world such a small place now ’cause before we’d ever been to America and South-East Asia, we were still able to build up a fanbase over there just through Twitter and Facebook and stuff, and Youtube as well. It’s just so important in this day and age.
Ultimately, where would you guys hope to be in the next year or so as a band?
We just want to carry on doing what we’re doing now and maybe on a bigger scale. Maybe move up to arena tours and obviously America is a big thing for us this year so we’ll head out there a little more and start releasing our singles over there. Because we’ve been over there quite a bit but we haven’t actually released the album or the singles or anything yet so that’s a big goal for us this year.
Sweet! Thank you so much for that interview, and I’ll catch you guys at the Dublin show next week.
Amazing, I’ll see you there. Thank you so much!
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