Storm Pilot

So Chris, how did Storm Pilot come about? We formed for a one-off project to see if we could play the Glastonbury Festival... and we did! It wasn't until the reaction we received that we realized what we had created was something special.

But was the reaction because they were all high? Well, if they were, we just enhanced their experience! I remember seeing a very pretty woman in a pink bikini, green wellies, wearing fairy wings jigging about. It was no wonder I suddenly missed my line!

So after that the only way was down, right? Not at all. We love what we do, working on new sounds, writing our own material and just rocking out live.

And your influences? An eclectic mix really – Foo Fighters, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, Phish and a few others thrown in. Nothing too heavy, though.

Some people say you sound a bit like Mick Jagger, Chris... Yes, well that is not intentional but I did manage to convince my mother that the Stones' Saint Of Me was Storm Pilot! She laughed her head off when I revealed the truth... she'd been completely taken in!

So what are you working on now? We are putting together some new tracks and have a better sound than our early Glasto stuff, slightly more raw and rough round the edges. Some new tracks are uploaded on this site – the result of our first jam session with a new bass player. There's nothing polished here but they are not bad considering the rest of the band didn't really know the tracks – I just threw them in to see where we they took us! These recordings are literally just the second take on each of them and they are recorded live.

Mary Jane is a Tom Petty cover. Do you do a lot of covers? Not really, we like to throw one or two in but we are not a covers band as such. We've done this one and then covers of other bands' versions of covers, such as Grand Funk Railroad's version of Gimme Shelter and the Foo Fighters' cover of Pink Floyd's Have A Cigar – very challenging live!

In what way? Well it's more challenging vocally. You can really do some damage to your vocal cords when you belt this one out!

So what now for Storm Pilot? We keep writing material and have about two albums' worth of tracks now, from which we can pick the best to put together for our first album. It's just finding the time – we all have the day jobs to pay the bills – but we will find the time!