Photo by Fraser Marchbank
Reef are legends. If you’ve been following their career, you’ll know they’ve not got a bad song in them and are one of the best live bands on the circuit. And seeing Reef live is a time when people come together and unite in the name of great rock music.
Reef first came to people’s attention with a Sony Mini-Disc commercial that painted the band as LA slackers, rather than the West Country British rockers they really were. This was an image quickly shed upon release of their first album, 1995’s ‘Replenish‘. Time travelling back to 1996 with the release of ‘Glow‘, Reef were everywhere. The band were featured weekly on Chris Evan’s TFI Friday and people were dancing like nutters to their songs at nightclubs. Even to this day ‘Place Your Hands‘, like Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit‘, is one of those rare songs that will get even the most reluctant onto the dance floor. Follow up singles ‘Comeback Brighter‘, the beautiful ‘Consideration‘ and ‘Yer Old‘ cemented Reef alongside the likes of Supergrass, Blur and Oasis as the best of British.
Reef followed up ‘Glow‘ in 1999 with the equally brilliant ‘Rides‘, an album of epic proportions and ambitious song writing. This was swiftly followed by ‘Getaway‘ in 2000 and in 2003 the band released ‘Together‘, a best of collection that was unusual in that it boasted 5 new songs, originally intended to be on the 5th Reef album.
There’s also been some changes over the years, including a hiatus from 2005-2009, the loss of guitarist Kenwyn House and drummer Dominic Greensmith from their original line-up. They also had Jesse Wood (son of Ronnie) on guitar and more recently they teamed up with Duran Duran legend Andy Taylor, who joined the band for 2022’s excellent ‘Shoot Me Your Ace‘ album.
As Reef embark on their 2023 tour, we catch up with singer Gary Stringer and talk about their reenergised new album, Jesse’s recently announced departure, the legacy of ‘Place Your Hands‘, Peter Andre, The Masked Singer and what the future holds for Reef 3.0.
Hey Gary, how are you?
Yeah, I’m alright, thanks. It’s been nice actually, the last few weeks, the last couple of months, I’ve been getting back into music after having a good time off over Christmas. It’s felt good. It’s been good to feel the guitar in my hands and start singing again.
Reef have been part of pop-culture since the 90s and have been entwined with many people’s lives. When it was released everyone was singing ‘Place Your Hands’, and you’d hear people shouting “Alright now!” wherever you went.
Well, that song has just got a life of its own. It’s quite something, and something I’m very proud of. To have a song that connects people as one. I mean, I don’t know whether you’ve seen the Twitter page ‘Place Your Hands‘ but it charts the sales of the song. It’s bonkers. I mean, you know to see it’s suddenly sold 1000 copies in the last week.
How many years is it? It’s 25 years old now. It’s a long time and to still be selling in those numbers. You must have made a connection and there’s not many months that go by, or weeks even when I don’t get a message on the socials from someone who’s heard it in a bar in Melbourne, or Singapore or wherever and the reaction that it gets, that’s something I’m really proud of.
Did you know it’s part of Peter Andre’s live set?
No! Really who told you that?
We went to Butlin’s for my brother-in-law’s stag do – my wife’s family are from the West Country and they all love Reef – Andre was headlining, he played ‘Place Your Hands’ and everyone went wild.
Oh my God! So he put it in his set?
Yeah, it’s in his set, in fact it’s one of his main songs.
That’s amazing. Well, good on him. Good on him. I’m happy to hear that. We did Shine one weekend last year. To be honest, we all thought “Should we do these shows?” Anyway, we accepted it and it was absolutely brilliant. It’s 7,000 people in that big dome there. It just went off. It was a real highlight of the year actually. You should never judge books by their covers and we had a great time and a good drink afterwards and it was really well received. You know, like the new album, I mean, you might think that we just become a heritage band but no way, to chart the new album, to have the success we’ve had with it, it’s something that we’re really proud of. In the last five years we made a couple of really good rock records and it’s been a really good ride and I’m very thankful for it.
Reef’s never felt like a nostalgia act and it’s almost like you never split up. You just carried on going. It was just a few years off and during that time was StringerBessant, which I loved.
Yeah, I think it’s funny. So remember, when we did take a rest in the mid 2000s and thought, right, we’ll put the tools down for a while and it didn’t take long for music to sort of enter my consciousness again, you know, my lifestyle again. And yeah, we made a rock record ‘Them is me‘, with me and Jack with Nathan [Curran] and Jonas [Jalhay]. That was really good fun. Going from playing 1500-2000 people down four or five hundred was really just fun, and driving around in my van and just getting back to basics. And the whole StringerBessant thing was a trip.
I’ve never been great on the guitar and to put one in my hands and go out and play shows with Jack, then we got picked up by Charlie Caplowe from Xtra Mile Recordings and made ‘Yard‘. And that was a really beautiful record. I really enjoyed the whole process of making it. And then we turned it into a band with The SB Band and went out and did that for a year or two, and went out to Europe and through the UK. And it was brilliant. I’m really proud of both of those records.
And now you have ‘Shoot Me Your Ace’
Well we had that all the way through the pandemic because ‘Shoot Me Your Ace‘ was finished literally the weekend before the lockdown. So we sat on that record for a couple of years really, whilst I’m working out what the best thing to do with it was. And one of the things that kept us going was that we had this great record. Every time I played it I felt so excited for people to hear it. And then to get around to the point of actually touring that last year and for it to chart like it did, it’s funny. You think you want to let go of music sometimes and it doesn’t take long. But even now, just starting to write and record at my house here in Somerset. I’ve got a space at the back of the garden, it looks rugged, a little space to record and it’s really energised me. It’s been fabulous. You have to care about all the hard times but when you have some you keep being creative all a long. It speeds everything up and it makes you feel good. So, yeah, I’m stoked to still be involved in music. You know, I’m going to be 50 this year and I started doing this when I was 19. So, I’m a lucky man.
Revelation was only released just before the lockdown, wasn’t it?
Like a year before? 2018, 2019, something like that. ‘Shoot Me Your Ace‘ happened very quickly. I had a phone call from Andy Taylor. He was making a record and he got me out there and I went and sung five or six songs. I really enjoyed that whole process. Andy was in Spain in his own studio there, working on his record. And I went out for a couple of trips and started singing his songs. And there was a connection and it wasn’t long before he came back to England and I introduced him to the band and our rehearsal space in Somerset. And he picked up a guitar and we just naturally started rocking out. And within six months we’d written a great record. And then it got it recorded just before everything locked down. It’s been a wild ride, it’s been great.
Was Andy an official member of the band?
Andy produced the record and he played on it. I mean, he’s not playing with us now, he’s doing his own thing. And obviously he’s had his health issues, it’s horrible, isn’t it? But yeah, we had a great two or three years with Andy.
All the way through lockdown we were communicating and then he came and did some shows for us for a year. And that was really good fun. But he’s got things on his plate now that he needs to deal with. And, we’re moving on to pasture’s new ourselves. So, it was brilliant working with him. Everything musically was so easy with Andy. He’s a very talented guy. We’d never had two guitarists in the band and for it to work as seamlessly as it did, it was, you know, testament to both Jesse and Andy that they worked together so well.
‘Shoot Me Your Ace’ sounds like a classic Reef album, any song could have been off ‘Replenish’ or ‘Glow’.
Yeah, it’s a rock and roll record, you know. I think with ‘Revelation‘, there’s a few hard rockers on there. It’s fresh, ‘Precious Metal‘ is really strong as is ‘Revelation‘ itself. But we we’ve always had R&B in our repertoire, with a couple of cover versions and a choir as well. We always love getting involved in all sorts of styles of music. I don’t want to ever become polarised or stuck in one form but I know that we can do rock and roll really well. We’ve always had that and with this record there were actually two ballads that we recorded that never saw the light of day; They just didn’t really fit, so we just kept it to a 10 track rock album.
And one of your biggest hits ‘Consideration’ was a ballad, or rather a slower song
Absolutely. We always play that live. And that’s another song that connects with a lot of people and again every few months I’ll have a message saying how much it means to someone and resonates with whatever they were going through. I think it reinforces why music is so important. It’s from probably when you’re in the womb, you hear music and you celebrate babies being born and christenings and birthdays and people’s lives with funerals, it’s all the way through our life. There it is. It’s a very valuable, emotional part of the human existence that’s very special.
You just brought back a memory that I haven’t thought about for a very long time where ‘Consideration’ had a real emotional impact on my life. It’s the power of your music.
Yeah. It’s an emotional thing. It can lift you up, or make you feel down. And, you know, the down stuff can resonate in way that are very special. You know, there’s a place for all sorts of music, whether it’s Friday night getting ready to go out and have fun or for self-reflection at home, that there’s all sorts of areas in music. It’s such a special bit of magic and where does it come from? It’s quite remarkable, really. The only input you need is your time. There’s no other raw materials involved. As long as you’ve got some form of making notes and a voice to sing with, you can use your imagination and create something really special from nothing. Not many industries that can do that.
Every album you’ve ever released has been excellent but if you had to pick one and say “This is the one you should listen to” what would it be?
Oh I’m not sure I could!
I would probably say ‘Rides’.
Oh wow that’s not the album everyone thinks of!
But it’s such a great album, every song felt epic, like it was telling a story but was part of a bigger picture.
Yeah it’s a banger isn’t it! I love the orchestration on ‘Funny Feeling‘, I play that every now and again you know Dave Campbell, he’s an absolute legend, and he scored what was a very simple song and just made it quite incredible. And when I listen to it it’s quite something and I’m really proud of that record. We got to record it out in Los Angeles and spent a lot of time there and had a lot fun with George Drakoulis at the at the helm, guiding us and that’s a friendship that’s still endures to this day. You know he came back and did ‘Revelation‘ with us and not many weeks go by when I don’t speak to him, he’s a legend.
I first saw George’s name with Reef but now I see him on so many great film soundtracks.
Yeah he’s moved into the film world, putting original music into films and there’s no one better for that really because every time you meet George, you’re always going to learn something new about music. When we did ‘Together‘ we went out to do one or two tracks and we were actually starting the fifth Reef record but then Dom left, and we had five or six songs recorded like ‘Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)’ was one of them, as well as four or five standalone Reef songs and that man has got a lot of knowledge and a lot of love for music, so he’s involved in film now and he’s a clever stick.
I actually have a signed copy of ‘Together’ that was only available at Selectadisc (RIP) in Nottingham. There was a sign up saying “Only available to people who ask nicely”, so I asked nicely and I got one.
Oh wow, well ‘Together‘ was quite a good marker really, because we’d done four original albums, we started the fifth and Dom had left the band, so it kind of felt like the right thing to do, to put all of the hits that we had up to that point out with the new music and that was a kind of a good a good marker of where we’d come with our original line-up, with Dom, Kenwyn, Jack and myself and that was a good sort of pause. Then we took some time out and when I did all the things we’ve talked about already, and then we had a call from Live Nation asking us to put six shows on sale. This must have been around 2009 and we had a chance to see if it would still work, and it did and those shows sold out. That sort of kicked us off again, we went and did a year or two touring on the back of that. Dom and Ken said look we want to go and do our own thing, which was fair enough. Things move and change and it’s just been a brilliant journey and even making ‘Revelation‘ and being signed by a German label Ear Music, it was just really special to work with George again and create a broad palette of music, just to cover something new. And then into ‘Shoot Me Your Ace‘ and here we are still rocking out and looking forward to going on tour next week.
Reef are one of the best live acts I’ve ever seen, right up there with Extreme, Foo Fighters and The Who.
Absolutely, absolutely and we can’t wait! We toured from March to September last year and we’ll probably do March till September this year. Then I think I’ll probably start concentrating on doing some songs I want to release myself. I’ll probably start thinking about moving into that but it’s really great fun to go out with Jack, Luke [Bullen] and Amy. I mean Amy Newton is a super talented guitar player, she can sing, she can shred, so it’s great to be back to the four piece and it’s kind of like a new start for us.
So is Amy taking over from Jesse on the tour?
Yeah that’s right yeah! We were always were a four piece, it was only when we did the record with Andy that we became a five piece. We auditioned Jesse and we got him in the band and we had just a wonderful five years with him, he’s an absolute gentleman. He’s got a brilliant style and he was the stand-out from those auditions because he was the only guy in the in the room that actually jammed with us. We went in and we’d say we wanted them to play X Y Z and everyone can do that, everyone who turned up to the audition could do it, but Jesse was the only one who we started jamming with and that just really suited us. So it’s really special and we made two belting records with him like ‘Revelation‘ and ‘Shoot Me Your Ace‘. It’s a real shame that he’s moved on but he’s got his own things to do, he’s got his own projects to work on and you respect that; And you know we’re all cool, there’s no fallout it’s just time moves on and now I think it’s his time to shine.
I was genuinely shocked to find out Jesse had left Reef, because it felt like he’d always been there and had cemented himself in the band.
It’s funny because one thing we won’t do is put out a bad record, you know we won’t just settle, it’s got to be killer yeah and I can look back on those two records with Jesse and say they’re absolutely brilliant, I’m so proud of both of them. In the last one we released that ourselves and that was that was a whole journey, just to learn about how the industry’s changed, how things moved on and it’s just been fabulous. But yeah, hats off to Jesse he was the right guy at the right time and we just had a blast and you can play those two records back and just feel really proud of the decision we made to have him in the band. And what a great ride we had, and that’s the way I look at, it is not the fact that he’s gone it’s the time that we had together, it was really special, really good fun.
So it didn’t bring back feelings like when Ken left?
I know the band’s gonna continue so it’s not the same as when Ken left. We’d just gone to LA and started recording four or five songs and it’s Christmas time we came back for a break to England and Dom tells us at the airport he was off and it was kind of like “oh, okay” and that was that. Then we went and we had shows booked for the following spring and summer, we went out to Japan and it just kind of felt like a natural termination with those two guys. Dom came back and made ‘Revelation‘ which was great but with Ken, when Ken went, it just kind of felt that he wants to go off and do his own thing and you can’t really argue with that. That’s why I think ‘Together‘ was a good marker for us, for all the stuff that had gone before and now we’re on to a new Reef and you know that’s where we find ourselves and I’m really thankful for everything and everyone we’ve had in the band, it’s been blinding and we’re still rocking out.
And your records are all amazing, the quality hasn’t dipped, it’s stayed at the top.
Yeah, it’s gotta be it’s gotta be top notch.
Believe it or not one of my brother-in-laws had never been to a live gig until he was in his thirties, and guess who we took him to see?
It was Reef, yeah!
It was Reef! …So is Amy full time now?
Yeah Amy’s in the band. So it’s Amy, Luke, Jack and myself. We’ll go out this year play some rock shows and I’m really glad to be still doing it and we’ll see see where the future takes us. We’ll do these shows first, do the spring shows, we’ve never got a lot of time to go and you know work on a record, that’s never really happened, it’s just as you start playing together doing shows you start writing and that’s that’s kind of where we’re at now. It kind of feels like we’re starting with the blank canvas and we don’t want to repeat anything, so we’ll see what the future holds.
How do you write with the band?
There’s no rules with music, there’s none. So you can do whatever the fuck you like. It can be one guy, one girl has an idea maybe with lyrics maybe without, maybe a riff, maybe not and maybe chords but you know there’s no rules and that’s just the way to do it. The way to choose songs, to pick songs, the best ones that have the ingredients to be memorable. ‘Precious Metal‘ was the last song we wrote for ‘Revelation‘ and we play that pretty much every night, it’s just such a banging unit that worked so well. So does ‘Shoot Me Your Ace‘, we know that’s gonna be in the set because it’s just a killer! I think that’s what you want to do, you just want to distill your rock and roll, your rhythm and blues into the best live set that you possibly can and that’s where we are at.
Your voice is also really soulful. So it’s not just rock and blues, there’s a soul element to it. Where does that come from?
Oh, I don’t know. I mean, when I was a teenager, I was really into metal, rock and roll, DC, I was really into Bon Scott. And then as I turned 16, 17, 18, I started listening to a lot of blues music and gospel. I mean, R&B, you know, Aretha Franklin, I would listen to Aretha all day long. And I just love the way those songs are put together. So for me, it’s maybe one of the things. It might have held us back but I think our fans like a broad range of music, and I think music is such a wide palette, the whole rainbow of music and why wouldn’t you take all the colours? A lot of rock bands have been very successful concentrating on certain styles, certain vibes. Good luck to them. But for me, I like to express myself in all ways. And you know, I’m just really happy with the way it’s gone.
Would you ever do like something like I’m A Celebrity or The Masked singer?
I don’t know about that. I don’t know that’s my world. But you never know, I don’t know about ‘I’m A Celebrity’. I don’t think I could see myself going off to Australia for a month. But yeah, who knows? You just don’t know in life. So never say never.
Skin from Skunk Anansie did the Masked Singer, she’s incredible.
Yeah, she’s a super talent, she’s absolutely solid gold talent. She really is. And you know, we did shows with Skunk Anansie years and years ago, early doors. We played The Water Rats with them when we were just signed, maybe unsigned. And you could tell she was a star. She’s got a real lyrical genius, a fantastic voice. And a great stage presence. So she is someone very, very special to the world of music.
You’re one of the only artists in the world with a catchphrase in “All right now!”. I reckon you’re one of two in music history, with the other one being Michael Jackson with “Shamone”.
Well, I think that’s a compliment. George used to call me “The king of the ad libs”. And that’s really what it is. It’s putting in some sort of the percussive vocal thing into the spaces in the song. It’s something that I’ve always, always done. Of course, being the king of the ad libs “All right now” was just was just one of them. You know, it’s funny. Actually, we we got the master tracks back from ‘Glow’ the other day to listen to, and we listened to an Accappella version of ‘Place You Hands‘. It was really emotional. I think you know, 25 years ago in a booth somewhere that was me singing. But yeah, I’ll take that as a compliment.
We love tattoos even though the website is called Bad Tattoo, but do you have a bad tattoo?
I haven’t got any tattoos. No, I’m too hairy. Yeah, yeah, I’m too hairy. I’ve just never gone down that road.
And this last question comes from my 10 year old son, Hugo. He’s loves Reef and he loves rock. I asked him if he could ask you any question what would it be and the thing is, he also loves pandas, so he asked me to ask you “Do you like pandas?”
Well, I mean, I’m kind of ambivalent on pandas. I like, pandas sure! I mean, I’ve not got a strong opinion either way, but hell yeah, I’m thumbs up for pandas!
Thanks Gary, that’s been absolutely awesome. You’re a legend and it’s been an absolute honour talking to you.
Well, thanks for all your support. It was nice talking to you. And say hello to your extended family for me!
Reef are currently on tour with full dates below and for more on Reef check out reefband.com
MARCH
Thu 30, Plymouth, THÊ DEPØ VENUE
Fri 31,Bournemouth, O2 Academy
APRIL
Sat, 01, Wolverhampton, KK’s Steel Mill
Thu 13, Portsmouth, Portsmouth Guildhall
Fri 14, Northampton, Roadmender
Sat 15, Margate, Dreamland
Sun 16, Hastings, White Rock Theatre
Fri 21, Chester, THE LIVE ROOMS
Sat 22, Hull, The Welly
Sun 23, Guildford, Boileroom
MAY
Sat 13, Perranporth, Tunes in the Dunes
JUNE/JULY
Jun. 30 – Jul. 2nd, Malmesbury, Minety Music Festival 2023
AUGUST
Thu 17, Exeter, Escot Park
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