Cabin Boy Jumped Ship

Cabin Boy Jumped Ship are ready to set their new EP ‘Pathways’ loose on their upcoming tour, so we caught a moment with the band to find out more about them and what we can expect from their new material.

Your second EP ‘Pathways’ is due for release on the 20th May. What can we expect from the release, and are there any notable differences from your previous material?

Yes we have made many changes that build upon what we had before, but the basic elements that make up our sound and hold together the music like glue are all still there. Our guitars are now tuned much lower, the synths are more prominent and rather than just serve as another accompaniment they are more vital to the structures and arrangements of the songs. There’s also a hell of a lot more diversity in the vocal parts as we have all developed as vocalists since the last EP came out.

Did you face any challenges with your recording, and how did you overcome them?

We are lucky to have a relaxed atmosphere when it comes to recording as we are friends with a guy who rents out a rehearsal room, so we made a deal with him to convert one of his rooms to a control room in which we could set up our own recording devices. This means we can record whenever we all have time and take care developing our songs slowly without having to rush things due to time and money constraints. So any problems we had were generally easily overcome.

How are you feeling about your upcoming tour? You’ve been getting a great reception from the crowds, so you must be pretty stoked.

Yes indeed, it’s going to be very exciting and without a doubt the best and biggest headline tour we’ve had so far. A lot of the venues are amazing and we hope to see plenty of people come out to hear us play the new set for the first time in its entirety. It should go down well with our usual fans, some of which have intentions to come to more than one of the shows and even travel vast distances! Also we hope to convert a few new people and possibly even impress people who may dislike us.

Which tracks from the new EP are you most looking forward to performing live?

All of them are a lot of fun to perform both as guitarists and vocalists as we wrote them with the idea that the riffs are enjoyable to play and that we find the arrangements interesting. Obviously if you play a song 49 times for example it can become kind of tedious and repetitive but these new songs should keep that fresh feeling for a fair while yet. My favourite is the EP title track pathways as even though it’s simple, it’s a very powerful song live

Coming from Leicester ourselves, we have to ask how you’re finding the music scene in Leicestershire. There’s some great music venues about, and it would be great to get us back on the music map. As a band who play the circuit, what do you think the City is missing?

We are lucky to have a very diverse set of venues in Leicester which cater for all genres tastes and styles. Personally I feel this could also be the downfall of the scene as with so many different places the crowds are often spread out quite thinly across the whole city especially if there’s similar events on across several venues. We need a place that can bring together all these separate crowds in one place so small bands can play to decent audiences, which could cause growth amongst bands and help them step up to the next level eventually creating the city’s next big band

The photos from your most recent video shoot look very interesting. Which locations did you head out to, and are we allowed to know which track this was for?

That was an amazing day! We took a trip up to a nice mountain in the Peak District national park. We carried all the equipment up ourselves which was a massive effort as it was over a mile uphill. It was freezing cold up there too but it was totally worth it in the end as the location was stunning and paid off as the shots look like a huge step up.

It was the shoot for our next music video and single, The New World Order.

Who do you work with to create your music videos, and who comes up with the ideas for them?

Our guitarist Jay is mainly responsible for what you see in our videos. Not only is he often the camera man and coordinator he also has them artistic visions and conceptual ideas to make things happen and is a great director. We just ask him what’s best and he delivers decent ideas every single time. We are lucky to have him as it helps us a lot. He also creates videos for a job so if you need some audio visual sorting out then check out https://www.facebook.com/jhaudiovisual/

Conor, we have to ask about your elephants. Firstly, how did owning elephants in Thailand come about, and secondly, are they okay now after hearing they were sick?!

Owning elephants has dated hundreds and hundreds of years ago in Thailand however to domestic them the elephants are taken from their mothers at 1 year old and put through a process called phajaan which entails 7 days of beating and emotional torture to break the animals spirit. If after the 7 days it still resists it will go through phajaan again and again until it’s an empty shell of an animal. From that day on they will be worked like mindless zombies with many of them becoming severely disabled from carrying tourists on their back, the illegal logging trade or blind from mahoots stabbing them in the eye with a bullhook if they disobey. I volunteered at elephant nature park, a rescue sanctuary where they had rescued nearly 70 elephants which were mostly handicapped due to the horrible conditions working elephants are subjected to and I whilst I have this platform to speak on I’d like to say to all your readers, please do not ride elephants. they’re not designed to carry people and they certainly are not domesticated. Please visit the elephant nature park in Thailand and see the beautiful things they’ve done for this amazing creatures.

You released a single called ‘Replace The Hate’ to help raise awareness of bullying and suicide, with all the profits going to the anti-bullying campaign ‘Ditch The Label’. Hats off to you all, a very supportive thing to do. How much did you manage to raise?

Thank you, bullying is a problem we feel really strongly about and see it all the time in this day and age so we wanted to spread a message of positivity that they’re not alone. So far it’s been a great response, the sales reports for the month of RTH release come through this month so we do not have accurate figure yet.

What do you all get up to when you’re not busy making music?

As you may already know Conor runs his clothing line and is a businessman and entrepreneur, Jay makes professional videos for a living, Craig works in the motorway maintenance teams, Lloyd is a window-cleaner and Reece is in full time education whilst also working with his family business. Aside from work however we all have many different interests outside of music. It would take an eternity to tell you about it, but when we all have free time we like to hang out as friends rather than as band mates which helps no end to keep us all tight as a group.