With three quarters of The Bohicas literally learning how to play music as kids, forming a pre-teen garage band at 12-years-old, they eventually decided to ignore uni degrees and embrace life as fulltime musos in the last year or so. Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos happened to be in the audience of one of their earliest shows, liked what he heard and took them for a small tour around the UK and Ibiza.
Now there’s an EP on the way, an album nearing completion and the video for their double A-side release, XXX/Swarm, is still absolutely tearing up YouTube views. Things have moved fast for The Bohicas and front man Dominic McGuiness explains quite simply why the childhood friends finally decided to take this music thing seriously.
“I think we grew up a little bit and realised we wanted to avoid real work and play rock’n’roll for as long as we can,” he says. “It’s tunnel vision I suppose.” So how is he handling the role of front man with only a few serious hours of gigging and press under his belt? “It’s fine,” he says. “I mean, I can’t do anything else so I have to get this right otherwise that’s it for me. We’re trying to deal with it differently, though. We share the rhythm and lead guitar so there’s no single lead player; there’s no Elvis Presley. We also have harmonies so we’re The Beatles I guess.” The last comment is delivered with a wry laugh – he’s no Gallagher brother – he’s actually nice.
Unlike the usual career progression, The Bohicas are only just about to do their first run of fully-fledged festival dates and McGuiness is keen to see how the audiences compare with smaller club shows. “We’ve got a bunch of festivals we’re gonna be doing over here in the UK over the summer,” he says. “We have done a few small city festivals here and they’ve gone really well. We played one the other day in Leeds and I wasn’t expecting that kind of reception at all.”
No matter how much kudos it gives you, supporting Franz Ferdinand would seem like a daunting way to kick off a career but McGuiness was humbled by the band’s warmth towards them and their continued support.
“Yeah it was a real deep end that one; it was so early on for us,” he says. “They were really lovely, though. Alex had come to see us a couple of times in much smaller, crappier venues in London and he just has nothing but love for us. We’ve done another show with them since Ibiza and that was awesome, too.”
They’ve got some catching up to do as far as releases go, with a plethora of material written and a burgeoning fan base growing ever more eager for their music. “We’ll have the EP to release, hopefully, before we come over. We’re recording the album at the minute as well and it’s basically done, we’re just putting the final pieces onto that,” he says. “We’re recording in a place out east that takes about two hours to get there and it’s in a warehouse at the back of a fish shop. It’s not exactly the slick, Abbey Road environment you might think of but it’s really big. There’s this great space where we can play live and actually see each other without having to look around corners or anything; it is a pretty good space in a way. And it’s big enough that it doesn’t smell of fish, but you pass it on the way so it’s not the most appetising start to the morning.”
BY KRISSI WEISS
