Getting in touch with Brighton’s Unsigned 4 piece ‘1InFive’ to get to know them more!
What are your Full names and ages?
Jay Halsall
Mike Roche
Chris Roche
James Twaites
All ageing between 25-42
What is your Bands Genre?
Put simply we’re a Rock band. We’ve also been referred to as Classic Rock and Hard Rock, but let’s
be honest it’s all Rock isn’t it?
Of course It’s all Rock!!!
Check out what the boys like!!!
Give us a little bio of the band and you guys as individual?
Jay: I Like Spicy foods, dogs and Jim Morrisson.
Mike: I’m the one who comes up with all the bizarre songs to cover and talks a lot about tone.
Chris: I Like Irish literature and Lithuanian food.
James:Sports, yeah im classed as the sporty one,i like running and hockey or some sort of sport.
And as a Band, these 4 are just like every other lad thats loves music …which has to be decent and having a good beer and hanging out with free thinking, like minded, interesting people.
Where did you get the band name from?
Well it’s a media and political point more than anything. The sad truth is that 1 in Five children die
every year unnecessarily of things that are often curable and preventable – like malaria or diarrear
for example. It’s never reported in those terms, and no one who could really does anything significant
about it. There’s enough wealth in the world to sort issues like this out once and for all yet we don’t.
Rich people keep getting richer, some of them give money to charity of course but if you look at the
scale of what some people earn the amount they’re giving back is a tiny proportion most of the time.
We care about it and the band name is our way of making the point – in our own small way. And it f
works for us (like when you ask us what the band name means!). We are a band, not a political party,
but if we can raise awareness of it our way we will.
It’s also a bit of a nod to a great Doors song. “Five to One baby, One in Five, no-one here gets out
alive now…”
Who does what in the band?
I.e. who does the vocals, who plays what, who writes the songs
Jay Halsall – Vocals / Guitars
Mike Roche – Guitars / Backing Vocals
Chris Roche – Keyboards / Backing Vocals / Guitars
James Twaites – Bass / Backing Vocals
Having used a Studio drummer for their lasest EP ‘HoldOn’ , These are looking for a full time member too bang the drums for their tracks!
It could be you… get in touch haha
All writing their own songs but taking melodies and riffs and picking the best!
Jay: By the time we’ve all got a hold of something and we’ve riffed it out it always sounds completely different to how it started. That’s the great thing about having 4 people who can write together, you get a great mix of influences and styles that you can work with.
Not really wanting to be signed these guys are here for the music,fans and gigs but they do have an idea of what they want.
Are You Signed?
No. We’re not really into that. We might start up our own record label in the future, but for now there’s
no reason not to self promote. It means we can give music away for free that way. Music should be
free anyway, we’ll make our money from gigs and t-shirt sales, or vinyl maybe. But if we went to a
record label they’d try to change it or manipulate it, give us an image sell it, take a cut, and some
bright spark would put it on a torrent site anyway so what’s the point? We’re having a great time and
people seem to like what we’re doing so lets not muddy it by getting a record label involved!
What instruments do you play?
We’ve got a whole load of guitars between us. Mostly Gibson Les Paul’s, some Fender Strats, and
there’s an Epiphone Wilshire in there. We use Marshall and Mesa Boogie amps. James uses a
Peavey bass, Chris has got a really sexy Roland Keyboard and we use Gretsch drums. There’s also
some tambourines and shakers etc on the EP. We’re just finishing off a track for The Dragon Slayer
of Brighton’s upcoming podcast (check him out on twitter by the way @DragonSlayerBTN) which has
some cool sound effects using knives and cheese graters as well. So anything really,
How did the band come about?
We’ve all been in bands since we can remember. 1 in Five all started really in 2006 when Mike and
Jay formed a band called Montrose Avenue, named after the street Jay grew up on. Mike’s brother
Chris joined as a 2nd guitarist and we toured in and around South East England headlining local
shows and supporting signed touring artists like Imperial Vipers and Voodoo Six. In about 2011 we
parted ways and all went off to grow up a little bit but we never stopped wanting to play music.
Then last year in 2013 Jay and Mike started jamming and writing together again, bringing Chris back
– this time to play Keys. 1 in Five was formed and it was a more mature, distinct sound that began
to develop. Mike went to school with James and they’d also been in bands together since they could
remember so we were delighted when he joined in 2014 to play bass as finished off the Hold On EP.
How did you guys meet?
Mike and Chris are brothers. Mike went to school with James. And Jay and Mike used to work
together. So in short, Mike.
Who are your influences?
We could write 100s of names here, there are so many good bands and so many more coming out.
We were recently compared to The Doors and Deep Purple which is an amazing compliment. Other
influences include (but are not exclusive to) Led Zeppelin, Rival Sons, Black Star Riders, Alice in Chains,
Soundgarden, Pink Floyd & Slash…
What are your backgrounds whether it’s in music or not?
We’re just like everyone else, we work to pay the bills and we play music to have a good time. None
of us were born with silver spoons in our mouths so we’ve had to work hard to get to this point.
How did music come in to your lives and when did you start doing it?
Music comes to you at different points in your life. As children, and in your early teens you start
forming opinions and developing a taste in it. For Jay it was the Doors and The Clash, for Mike it was
Nirvana and The Levellers, Chris loved Jimi Hendrix, James was Neil Young. Then you meet people,
share your music, they share back and your taste widens and develops.
We all started playing in school, we’ve never stopped.
How do you get inspiration to write songs?
Musically we always turn up with a few riffs or melodies that just sort of happen. The challenge is to
bring it together and capture some of the raw essence of what we’re doing before we all kind of jump
on it, mess around with it, put some structure in and start to turn it into a song.
Lyrically we write about things that matter to us. We’re all quite political and a bit ranty and Jay is
excellent at capturing that passion and anger and putting it to music.
Has this impacted on this band or would you say it’s different?
We do this because we enjoy it and its fun. There’s a serious message in there and we don’t think
enough people talk about it, so we’re bringing that together with some great music. There’s too much
throwaway music today, no-one really cares about the plastic pop idols and what they say but it’s
rammed down our throats so much we forget anything else exists. We talk about important issues,
speak strong political messages and explore actual emotions. We don’t want to ram it down people’s
throats, but we do want you to think about.
When will you be releasing material?
The Hold On EP is out now! You can stream it for free on SoundCloud (https://soundcloud.com/
1infive/sets/holdon) and download it for free from our website www.1inFive.com
Where do you see the band in 2-5 years time?
Doing the same thing, but with more fans, more gigs, more albums and having even more fun.
This is what youngster need to look up too! dont you think, they need to know that Music should be shown to the world but not for fame, it should just be for the love of the music and letting others be inspired by it!
If you wasn’t doing music what would you’s be doing?
Probably thinking about playing music.
Do you have a website, social media pages and music pages for your fans?
Yes! You can contact us in loads of ways…
Website: www.1inFive.com
Listen: www.SoundCloud.com/1inFive
Like: www.Facebook.com/1inFive
Follow: www.Twitter.com/1inFiveHQ
Watch: www.YouTube.com/1inFiveHQ
Read: www.1inFivenews.tumblr.com
E-mail: 1inFiveHQ@gmail.com
Go check out ‘1InFive’ from Brighton and be sure to follow their musical journey…
