Exposed Vocals Interviews ‘Mr Happy Chainsaw’
Mr Happy Chainsaw are a 4 piece pop punk rock band from Essex who were formed in early 2004. Born into a local music scene dominated by metal and emo with a band name based on the
Alkaline Trio song “Mr Chainsaw”, Mr Happy Chainsaw brought catchy sing along choruses, punchy guitar riffs, funky smooth bass lines and rhythmic flowing drums.
Over the years Mr Happy Chainsaw have taken their catchy rock music all over the UK playing with some of the best UK bands of old and new with likes of The Vibrators, UK Subs, Madness, TAT, New Town Kings, My Awesome Compilation, Koopa, We Are The Ocean, INME and Enter Shikari all having shared a stage with the Essex quartet.
After 5 years of gigging, recording numerous CDs and winning
Colchester Battle of The Bands, Mr Happy Chainsaw went on hiatus in 2009 due to personal reasons. But 2016 sees the return of Mr Happy Chainsaw after 7 years away. Back with a new
drummer, new songs and new gigs.
You can hear some of Mr Happy Chainsaw’s back catalogue on
Spotify, Deezer, iTunes and Amazon Prime Music and a new CD
will be available in the next few months.
Exposed Vocals: Â So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?
Mr Happy Chainsaw:  Well I won’t bother starting at very the beginning as I (Martin) along with Scott, who is my brother and guitarist in Mr Happy Chainsaw had a ‘normal’ upbringing as did Chris (bassist) and Jason (drums).
Scott and I grew up listening to a wide variety of music, anything from Queen to Abba, The Beatles to Barry Manilow, Elton John to Nirvana. So we had a love of music from an early age. In the early 2000’s I started getting more and more into punk rock and pop punk. I was going to gigs more or less every week watching bands like Alkaline Trio, Blink 182, Green Day, The Offspring etc. The energy, the angst, the witty and catchy lyrics, the feeling of being at a packed and sweaty gig with everyone singing the songs inspired me to form the band that would eventually become Mr Happy Chainsaw.
Several months in our guitarist left to go to uni and Scott who was and still is an incredible bassist decided to go out buy himself a guitar and stack, locked himself in his room for a week and learnt guitar so he could join the band. That’s when Mr Happy Chainsaw really started.
We gigged and recorded for several years until 2009 when we were left without a bassist and our drummer at the time suggested a friend of his called Chris. Chris joined the band and with our drummer at the time Ben we started getting more national exposure, supporting some big bands and playing some of the UKs best venues. Unfortunately as 2009 closed due to personal reasons Mr Happy Chainsaw decided to break up.
So 7 years past and circumstances changed and we saw an opportunity to give it another go, Ben our former drummer had moved away from playing drums so the search began to find a new drummer. That’s where Jason comes in. We were looking for a drummer, Jason was looking for a band and from the first session we all just clicked. The feeling I have playing with this line-up, with the new songs we’ve written reminds me exactly why I formed the band in the first place. It’s all about that adrenalin rush and the buzz you get from playing rock music.
Exposed Vocals: How did you come up with that name? What was your inspiration behind it?
Mr Happy Chainsaw: Well initially we were going to be called Pivot after the Friends episode when Ross is moving the sofa up the extremely tight stairwell. That lasted one band practice. At that time (well Scott and I still do) I was listening to a lot of Alkaline Trio and Mr Chainsaw was in my head on a daily basis. We had a gig booked, they asked for the band name, Mr Happy Chainsaw was blurted out. The rest is history.
Exposed Vocals: What do you think about online music sharing? Do you ever give your music away for free? Why?
Mr Happy Chainsaw: Love it, it opens up the world of music to a wider audience. It’s not about the 9-5 trips to HMV to buy a mainstream artist anymore. It’s all about the 2am sessions listening to some unknown Swedish band covering Paul Simon that would not of happened in the old days.
Yea we give our music away for free. As an artist you want people to hear your music, if you get into music to make money then you are a fool. So what better way to engage potential new fans than to reward their support with a free track or 10.
Exposed Vocals: Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?
Mr Happy Chainsaw: Practice, Practice, Practice. Get a good solid local fan base and use that as your platform to further gigs. If you are creating a buzz on the local scene, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to get gigs further afield. Social Media is huge now so use that wherever you can.
But if anyone reading this finds the magic formula to getting gigs and airplay when you want and need it please let me know lol
Exposed Vocals: Where do you usually gather songwriting inspiration? What is your usual songwriting process?
Mr Happy Chainsaw: It varies to be honest. A lot of the time Scott will write a riff or full song and I’ll write a vocal melody to go with it, but it also works in reverse where a Chorus will just come to me and I’ll sing it to Scott and he’ll work something out on Guitar to go with it. Then we’ll take that basic structure to band practice where Chris and Jason will add their ideas and it becomes our next future hit.
Lyrically I like to write about things that have gone on in my life,I take inspiration from someone close to me or something that’s prevalent in the news. It makes the song mean more and helps people relate.
Exposed Vocals: Do you have a band website? What online platforms do you use to share your music?
Mr Happy Chainsaw: Yes we do http://www.mrhappychainsaw.co.uk but we also use Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, Reverbnation etc to make it easy for our fans to find out about us on any platform they desire. When it comes to our music although it is available on Facebook etc we get the majority of our plays from Spotify, Deezer, iTunes, Amazon, Youtube etc. If you name it, then our music is more than likely on there somewhere.
Exposed Vocals: If you were given half a million dollars and a year off, what would you do? How would you spend it?
Mr Happy Chainsaw: We’d invest it, maybe shares in Nintendo, Sterling, Apple or something. That or buy 5 million penny sweets, that’d be cool.
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Okay, back to serious answers. We’d start by getting in the studio and finishing off a new album. Have it mixed and mastered professionally, we’d buy a tour bus, kit it out so it could house all our equipment, have somewhere we could sleep and relax etc and get out on the road playing anywhere and everywhere we could to promote it and us.
Exposed Vocals: How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?
Mr Happy Chainsaw: Well you’ve got to be creative. Find bands of a similar style to yourselves and see what they are doing, use the current “big thingâ€. When we were originally around it was all about Myspace and playing gigs to get gigs. Now it seems to be all about how many Facebook likes your page has or how many followers your Twitter account has. You need a big following before you can even get pay to play gigs. It’s much harder for bands now than it used to be, a lot of that seems to be down to a lot of the music venues in the UK closing down so promoters need to be more picky with who they chose to have at their venue as the ratio of bands to venues has depleted massively. Just move with the times and constantly change your marketing strategy.
Exposed Vocals: So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?
Mr Happy Chainsaw: Currently we are in the process of writing new material for an album which we plan to record later this year, early next, we are booking gigs wherever and whenever we can and trying to rebuild our fanbase. With us being away for 7 years a lot of things have changed. Fans now have families and jobs and like I said before the way you promote yourselves has changed massively.
Exposed Vocals: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?
Mr Happy Chainsaw: Well Chris would more than likely be fishing, Scott would probably be a professional golfer, I reckon Jason would be doing something with photography and I would more than likely be working and spending time with my family.
Exposed Vocals: How do you juggle the rest of your responsibilities while trying to stay ahead in your music life?
Mr Happy Chainsaw: It’s difficult as we have jobs, partners, kids etc to worry about as do most people our ages. But we are all so passionate about music and Mr Happy Chainsaw specifically that we all find time for the band whenever we can.
Exposed Vocals: What should fans look forward to in 2016?
Mr Happy Chainsaw: The Olympics, the return of Blink 182, Tottenham playing in the Champions League and obviously New Music and gigs by Mr Happy Chainsaw. If you are as psyched about Mr Happy Chainsaw in 2016 and 2017 then please check out the following:
https://www.facebook.com/mrhappychainsaw
https://twitter.com/mrhappychainsaw
https://soundcloud.com/mrhappychainsaw
