Latest Scoundrels News

  • TueFeb 21st

  • Happy Mardi Gras y'all! (Part 2)

    On arrival we became acutely aware of the fact that our paper bags wouldn’t quite cut the mustard in South Louisiana, and rightly so. After a few bemused looks we were promptly kicked out!

    We want to send all our happiest Mardi Gras wishes to y’all and especially to all our good friends we made in Cajun country, South Louisiana, we miss you all dearly.

    x Ned/Genie/Billy/G

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  • Happy Mardi Gras y'all!

    Happy Mardi Gras y’all. Brings back a lot of happy memories for us from our incredible time out in South Louisiana. Seeing as it’s Mardi Gras n’ all we thought we’d show y’all our poor attempts to fit in during “Country Mardi Gras”. The “Courir de Mardi Gras” (Mardi Gras Run) as it’s known is a special rural event in Southern Louisiana where everybody dresses up in these extremely colourful and elaborate, handcrafted clothes. Problem was we weren’t quite aware of the dress code at the time. Here Billy and I try and attempt to fit in with some “home made” head gear…

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  • MonFeb 20th

  • Repainting part 4...

    I’m nearly done now I think. I added elephants, some penny farthings (the old school bikes), popped in some hummingbirds and strange foliage and finished it with a picture of cricketing legend W.G. Grace…

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  • MonFeb 13th

  • Repainting part 3...

    My ode to Louisiana, interlocking fleur du lis and crawfish…

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  • Repainting part 2...

    So far all it looks like I’ve done is paint a chicken onto my guitar…well, I suppose there aren’t many people with “fowl adorned” guitars. 

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  • Repainting my guitar...

    I’ve decided to dust off the cobwebs on my old Epiphone SG and give it one heck of a pimp out. Gonna put in a Humbucker and a P90 and try repainting the body. Quite a risky proposition but I’ll make it up as I go along and see how it goes. Here it is, sanded and undercoated, ready for Rolf Harris’ magic to infuse my paint brush.

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  • ThuFeb 9th

  • New Studio!

    We’ve just acquired a new studio space up in Tottenham, it’s basically a crack-den at the moment but with several hundred licks of paint and a home built studio it’s going to be Scoundrels HQ, where we record in an old-skool, no frills kind of way.

    We’re taking inspiration from Daptone Records in Bushwick, New York where Amy Winehouse recorded “Valerie”…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wmdDYUFfMM

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  • TueJan 31st

  • 2012

    ‘Tis going to be a good year, we can feel it in all of our respective bones. We’ve got many, many things planned; tours, releases, music videos and the recording our second album.

                                                        ********************

    Around March/April we’ll be releasing our “Sexy Weekends” EP which’ll comprise 5 songs (Sexy Weekend, Bon Temps Rouler, Brothers, Beijing Honey and London) and will be released by our label Blue Horizon. Around the release we’ll also be offering a free release of “At Night”, another tune we recorded in our own studio with the assistance of Alex White, sax player for The Dirty Gentlemen. It’s a good ‘un.

                                                        *********************

    In the meantime we’ll be touring the UK, hitting the US in March and hopefully more globe hopping in the following months, returning for the British festivals, and the recording and release of our second album. We’ll be releasing gig dates soon so watch this space.

                                                       **********************

    In the meantime, check this out y’all…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQEWMictCrY&feature=related

    x Ned/Genie/Billy/G

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  • TueDec 20th

  • Cover of "Gulf Of Mexico"

    Check this y’all…

    We’re hugely flattered and impressed by this awesome cover version of our tune “Gulf Of Mexico”, thankyou Sam for performing such a great version!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75NKikGwHd8

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  • Christmas Greetings y'all...

    What better way to bring in the Christmas cheer than to head back on tour with The Kooks for their last remaining UK dates. Thankyou Birmingham, Leeds, Portsmouth and London for being so awesome to four scruffy, young lads from the south. We had a blast and are now fully prepped for a hit of mince pies, mulled wine and drunken renditions of “Silent Night”.

    We already can’t wait for what the New Year will bring too. We’ve just finished the final tweaks to our EP which’ll be released early next year (March) and it’s already sounding a notch above what we’ve already released. The track listing is below (in no particular order);

    Sexy Weekend

    Beijing Honey

    Brothers

    Bon Temps Rouler

    London

    We’re also gonna embark on some pretty intensive touring, so we expect/hope to see loads of you at venues all over the world. 

    Bring on the New Year!

    Happy Christmas y’all…

    Ned/Billy/Genie/G x

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  • ThuDec 1st
  • Q
    love your music guys! seen you advertised on facebook and now i cant get enough! keep up the great work!
    A

    Thanks so much - we love you too! 

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  • Q
    hey there guys, just got hold of a copy of the album sampler cd..... bloomin' love it!
    will the " sniff it up " ep be available on cd?
    A

    Hi there - so pleased you like the Sniff It Up EP - the tracks on it are available on our album which is called ‘Scoundrels’. You should be able to get it on amazon and all the usual places. 

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  • FriNov 11th
  • Q
    I'd consider myself very well schooled in quality music. I heard you guys through Kerrang Radio (Loud n Proud) and thought i need to check you out. I did & discovered various works of yours on tinternet. First i actually listened to was 'Dirty Weekend' and thought now that guy can sing and I loved the drummer showing skills from a different perspective. NOW I've got you album and am trying like hell to get as many people I know to listen to you're s@#t, you guys absof@#king lutely rock!
    A

    You’re too f@*#king kind!

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  • Scoundrels take on New York (and win). 

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  • ThuNov 3rd

  • Gig dates before Christmas...

    We’ve got some great gigs lined up for December that we’d love to see you all at…

    Friday, 9th December

    Green Door Store, Brighton (CHRISTMAS PARTY PART 1)

    Tickets - http://www.alt-tickets.co.uk/alttickets/event_ate_13750a.html

    Saturday, 10th December

    The Borderline, London (CHRISTMAS PARTY PART 2)

    Tickets - http://www.alt-tickets.co.uk/alttickets/event_ate_13739a.html

    Saturday, 17th December

    THE KOOKS Tour

    Birmingham Academy, Birmingham

    Sunday, 18th December

    THE KOOKS Tour

    Leeds Academy, Leeds

    Hope to see y’all there, it’s gonna be a good Christmas…

    X Ned/Genie/Billy/G

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  • MonOct 31st

  • Back from our east coast trip to the US...

    Yesterday we Scoundrels arrived back from a two week trip to the states, and my word what a trip it was. We had an incredible time, spent time recording our EP, played a few gigs and performed a live radio session for CBS in Howard Stern’s old studio.

    The CMJ Festival gigs were amazing, two showcases, one at the incredible Brooklyn Bowl for The Orchard and the other at Santos Party House for SESAC. Both were great venues, and we played to great, energetic crowds who seemed really up for it. Our other gig was in Washington at DC9, which is a great, vibey venue in an amazing city. Post gig we ventured out to check out some of the sights. The Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument have to be seen to be believed, nothing prepares you for the sheer size and presence of both.

    We were lucky enough to be asked to perform a live CBS Radio session which went really well. We performed “Arrogance Blues”, “Hangman’s Lament”, “Sexy Weekend” and “Beijing Honey” live in a skyscraper overlooking Manhattan. We were told that the studio had been home to shock jock Howard Stern’s famous show back when he used to work for CBS.

    As for the recording of the EP things couldn’t have gone better. We literally can’t wait to show y’all the results. We recorded 5 tunes, “London”, “Sexy Weekend”, “Bon Temps Rouler”, “Beijing Honey” and “Brothers”, all of which were sounding great. On “Brothers” we were lucky enough to be assisted by American Idol finalist Jermaine Sellers, whose soulful Gospel added some great depth to the tune. The studio itself was brilliant, and was owned by James Iha of Smashing Pumpkins fame. Our engineer Alonzo Vargas (50 Cent, P Diddy, Swizz Beats etc etc) was a maestro behind the desk, and our producer/label boss Richard Gottherer (Sire Records founder, The Orchard founder, ex Strangeloves frontman etc) was great at getting the best out of us and our tunes.

    We left New York full o’ beans, and just as it started to snow heavily. We had an amazing time and can’t wait to show you all the results. We expect the EP to be released early next year, around the same time we expect to cross the pond again for some more US touring.

    Can’t blimmin’ wait…

    x Ned/Genie/Billy/G

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  • FriOct 14th

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  • WedOct 12th

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  • ThuOct 6th

  • Scoundrels in Heat Magazine!

    Scoundrels in Heat Magazine, South Africa, who’d have thought it…

    http://heat.co.za/music/music-review-scoundrels-scoundrels/7159/

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  • Scoundrels single of the week on Kerrang!

    Loud n Proud is single of the week on Kerrang Radio, people. Tune in to Danielle Perry (Weekdays 11:00 – 15:00) and let her know how much you love Scoundrels!

    http://www.kerrangradio.co.uk/

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Meet the band

Ned Wyndham
Lead Vocals, Guitar
‘Guitar’ George Elliot
Lead Guitar,
Vocals
Billy
Bass
Josh ‘Genie’ Martens
Drums,
Vocals
The Band

The band: Ned, Josh, Billy, George

The suburbs of London are a long way from the swamps of Louisiana, and crossing the musical space between is the stuff that dreams are made of. But sometimes, when you concoct the right potion of talent, work, and magical circumstance, you will find that those dreams can come true. This is the story of Scoundrels, and how they got there.

For Ned Wyndham (25, vocals/guitar), Alex ‘Billy’ Hill (24, bass) and Josh Martens (25, drums) the journey had inauspicious beginnings. Being friends since their schooldays, they already shared the first magic ingredient to band chemistry, and a shared a love of 50s soul, roots, doo wop and classic rock led them all to London’s LCCM music college where they were able to hone their skills, putting on rootsy nights at Notting Hill Arts Club and The Troubadour and recruiting the final piece of their band jigsaw George Elliot (20, guitar) along the way. “College equipped us and it helped with our confidence,” admits Ned today, but they will admit that then, only two years ago, they had tendencies to play hour-long single-song jams peppered with renditions of the Batman theme. They picked their name simply “because it was better than Carpet Lickers.” Nothing wrong with that of course, but the real dream at play was to find and authentic British version of the kind of the kind of blues that existed in their record collections and their imaginations. And when they managed to do that, they would find things moving faster than they could ever have imagined.

Being enterprising types, the band had compiled a list of industry figures to which to send their demo. And in a moment of brilliant serendipity one of the first (in all likelihood one of the only) people to take the time to listen to it was the A&R legend of Sire Records, Seymour Stein, the man responsible for the careers of no smaller names than Madonna and The Ramones. The dreams of these four English boys then became the business of this American heavyweight who had a plan for them, as Ned explains:

“Within Seymour’s mind he came up with this idea, because he heard Cajun-ny vibes in there, and he waxed lyrical about South Louisiana, the scene and the music there, how it was this melting pot of blues, gospel and soul. He goes down there every year to get his musical hit. He said ‘you guys have got to go soak up the music and work in some of the fantastic studios they have down there.”

A few weeks and feats of management money-making magic later, and the band were on their way to their Beatles-In-Hamburg moment. They flew to the town of Lafayette (population 60,000) and were collected by a long-haired roadie with one tooth called Hart, who drove a 22-foot Lincoln Continental called the Cream Puff, accompanied at every stage by “a slightly bedraggled old stripper.”

There, they slept on a houseboat in the Louisiana swamps, lived on a diet of Crawfish and Gumbo, watched two or three bands every night, most of which invited them up onstage with them and gorged themselves on a diet of zydeco jazz, blues and modern rock. And by day they laid down the songs that were growing and evolving with every minute, growing rich in the Louisiana spirit. Some tracks, most obviously ‘Louisiana Song’ were written out there, but as Ned remembers “all the songs were played a certain way at home and every single one of them, when we got out there, was played a different way. One of the things was laying back on the groove. Everyone was so laid back, it was infectious the way they played beats out there.”

The sessions at Studio in the Country and La Louisianne might have opened out their music, but the warmth and hospitality of the people there had an effect on a band raised on the uptight London music scene that will stay with them forever. And this was not even to be the end of the Scoundrels American adventures. After six weeks in Louisiana they headed to Chicago to work with Steve Albini, whose organic approach of letting bands do things for themselves gave the record another flavour again.

The cat-loving lo fi impresario and cult rock Godhead left another indelible impression on the foursome. “He’s a really clever guy who knows so much about so many different subjects,” offers Ned, “he was a proper eccentric but really friendly. He wears a boiler suit to the studio with pens in his top pocket, round glasses and spiky hair. He’s very clever and quietly dry. After all the recordings he’d come and hang out and watch TV.”

Taking songs born from a British sensibility and stirring in two distinctly American approaches, Scoundrels’ debut mines a virgin sound. And saying a lot for the band’s unique identity, it is not immediately apparent which songs came from which sessions. The songs speak of youth and love and hope and hopelessness, putting an arched spin on the myth of sex and drugs and rock’n’roll.

‘Red Riding Hood’ puts a sexy, swampy spin on the predatory subtext of one of our most popular fairytales. ‘All On My Own’ channels the most legendary of bluesmen in a timeless tale of lost love, while the louche ‘Sexy Weekend’ is as satirical as it might sound self-indulgent. “I suppose a lot of the lyrics are a bit tongue in check. Some of them are ideas, some of them are true, some of the have bits of truth in them. I guess they are naturally quite English.”

So would the band really class themselves as Scoundrels? “It’s nice to have a certain amount of ambiguity about stuff like that,” laughs Ned. Without being purposefully offensive, we’re just a little bit cheeky maybe. We’re well-meaning scoundrels perhaps. We always have the best of intentions.”

A film documenting the making of the album by director Wyatt Garfield may be able to answer that one a little more accurately. But that the band have come up with a record that lives up to all of the classic rock rebellion they set out to encapsulate is undeniable.

Scoundrels Gig Dates

Upcoming Gigs

Past Gigs

Scoundrels Media

Videos

Loud N Proud

Gulf of Mexico

Arrogance Blues

Mary Joe

Kill It Kid Tour

Documentary

Gulf of Mexico (Acoustic)

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