Band Interview- introducing The Public Eye
The Public Eye are a four-piece band from Derby that create indie rock songs similar to artists like The Streets, Arctic Monkeys, The K’s, etcetera. The band have released many songs that have done amazingly well, one being their most recent single ‘Like A Loaded Gun‘. This success comes along with them having played gigs all around England and in Scotland which was made definite by their most recent tour which ended in October of 2024- throughout this tour the band had gigs from Leeds to London, and their first stop being in Glasgow! The Public Eye are always playing local and less-local gigs, find out more about the specifics on their Instagram here.
We got the opportunity to talk to The Public Eye recently, about their band and their music- from Joey (singer and guitarist), Cavan (bassist), Charlie (guitarist) and Zack (drummer), not forgetting Jonah who also plays within the band as a guitarist. Here’s what they said:
How did the band start?
Joey: ‘Me and Jonah the guitarist met on Fifa around lockdown time– I tell this story so many times. He was playing for my friend’s Sunday league team and we subbed him in as our CDM so he started playing CDM for our pro club’s team. It sounds really nerdy but it’s a cool way to start a band. And we just got on talking about music and stuff and yeah, we started a band. And I knew Zack from other bands in the area…’
Zack: ‘yeah we’re all from different schools.’
Joey: ‘…yeah that’s the thing we’re all from different schools so we thought as soon as we get in a room we could just fill it ‘cos we’ve all got our own groups of mates.’
Your first song was Bluenote – what was the inspiration for the writing of that song?
Joey: ‘We really wanted to get a gig at Bluenote – I know that’s the stupidest reason ever but it’s true. Bluenote is a venue in Derby and back in the day bands like New Order played there and yeah, we were just very young and writing about stuff we enjoyed, stuff 16 year olds write about like sneaking into clubs and stuff and people just seemed to really like it.’
What’s your view on the Derby music scene?
Charlie: ‘I think the Derby music scene is fantastic. It’s just it’s spread really wide across and its f**king brilliant mate.’
What makes it good?
Joey: ‘The way I look at it now, what makes it good is that it’s this untapped… a lot of people can get negative about it but there’s lots and lots of new bands popping up now that are dead young like 15 and 16 and you’re just watching them just develop and develop and develop and then other bands are sprouting out of them. So it’s a music scene that haven’t been discovered yet and it’s cool to be part of that whilst it’s starting to bubble.’
What’s your favourite venue that you’ve played?
All: ‘The Leadmill.’
Zack: ‘100% the Leadmill’
Joey: ‘…what do you think Charlie?’
Charlie: ‘That we’ve ever played? The Hundred Club is fucking sick.’
Joey: ‘We were talking about this earlier. The O2 in Leicester is also f**king unreal. The Leadmill’s like got all of it’s history but the O2, the actual scale of it is stupid. Obviously we got to do that with The Mercians which is dead cool.’
How have venues treated you as a band?
Joey: ‘I’d say all round like pretty nice.‘
Cavan: ‘I don’t think like we’ve ever had a bad experience with a venue they’re always quite welcoming. They give you everything that you need.’
Charlie: ‘I’d say that generally venues have been pretty welcoming. Like they give you everything that you need.’
Zack: ‘I was fuming that The Shed never gave us our £40…’
Joey: ‘…yeah we’ve still never received it! You bastards! Our £40 fuel money from three years ago – we want it – the interest has gone up to there!’ (gestures with hand)
What’s your favourite part about performing live?
Zack: ‘Just watching Joey’s hair. It’s brilliant just bouncing around… I enjoy it because I like watching everybody on the stage with me because everyone’s in the same type of vibe like pumping up the crowd, it’s that sort of feeling and I just love it for that.’
Joey: ‘It’s something you can’t really replicate just having all four five of us on stage together all feeling that same way that one thing. Everyone’s got that adrenaline feeling.’
Charlie: ‘It bounces off everyone in that room and it just it comes back to you off the crowd.’
Joey: ‘There’s nothing like it, it’s magic there’s no other word for it.’
Zack: ‘How do you feel in the crowd Tom?’
Tom: ‘These lades are brilliant band. Been mates for a couple of years now. Every gig I’ve been to has been outstanding from these lads. Joey brilliant lead singer. Zack brilliant drummer, this one here brilliant bassist. Charlie, brilliant guitarist. Brilliant lad he gave me a discount on some shoes – love him for that. Great guitar. Derby music scenes getting it right up there, big up The Public Eye!’
Joey: ‘…round of applause for Tom Kelly – we paid him £10 for that speech!’
Talking of gigs, Have you got any plans for any more gigs?
Joey: ‘I think we’d like to do another tour. Last year we did a tour and it was insane.’
Zack: ‘It’s gonna happen – straight up a tour’s gonna happen.’
Joey: ‘Leaked it!’
Zack: ‘I don’t know when (all laugh) you’ll find out when you find out I suppose it will just happen.’
Joey: ‘…yeah definitely another tour this year. I think it’s sick to go to another city that you’re not from and have other people from there want to come and watch you, it’s a daft feeling.’
What was the favourite part of your last tour?
Cavan: ‘…the Dominoes after London.’
Joey: ‘Yeah the Dominoes after London. That was like if you’ve ever seen the first Avengers film….I sound like such a nerd mate!’
Cavan: ‘The first Avengers film when they’ve just defeated Thanos’ army, when Loki’s been imprisoned, and they all go to the shwarma place – that’s what it felt like.’
Joey: ‘Yeah they’re all just scranning – that’s what it felt like.’
Cavan: ‘…and Chris Evans in that actually had a moustache in that which is why you only see the back of his head – I need to go outside more!’
Joey: ‘One of Ratcat who put the tour on for us,Ben Sandal, he’s actually a good friend of ours as well…. My favourite moment on the tour was probably we were in a hotel room in Leeds and I woke up to him mashing my head with a potato masher and saying “no I don’t think he’s very mashable” and I just kinda looked up and was like “ah yeah safe”. It was a notable moment.’
Zack: ‘…what about when you woke up and we were throwing tea on you?’
Joey: ‘no I didn’t like that because I woke up smelling of tea mate.’
We’ve heard that you guys have played some new songs at gigs – can you tell us a bit about those new songs that you’ve not released yet?
Joey: ‘what we can say – we are getting a project together that we want to share with everyone. We have put loads of work into it. They’re all like, they’re all sort of, talking about the themes of love. Love in it’s different forms like towards your friends love toward people, the loss of love and all of that in the modern world – we tried to have a theme for it this time. I’d like to put out something that we can all say we’re dead proud of this.’
Explain to me how you guys go about creating the music. Is it a collaborative process or just one or two of you?
Joey: ‘It’s definitely a collaborative process. We try and switch it up as much as we can to keep it fresh. I think when trying to be creative if you have a machine that just does the same thing every time then you’re just gonna keep like pushing out the same sausage and you want to have different ingredients going into that sausage every time that you make it so…(all laugh) you switch it up or otherwise you’re just going to keep making the same sausage and people will get bored of it.’
Do you all write the songs then, how does that work?
Joey: ‘Yeah. Well we all jump in.’
Cavan: ‘We’ve kind of changed it from how we used to do it which was where all of us were here bouncing ideas off of each other but then that was getting a bit stale so we thought we’d try something else. So you (Joey) and Jonah have been coming in and just getting like the ground works of the song and then me and Zack will come in and add in the extra bits and give it some critique and stuff like that and just take it to where it needs to be.’
Joey: ‘Zack do you have any comment?’
Zack: ‘No’ (all laugh)
I assume now that you guys have definitely established a fan base. What does that look like for you?
Joey: ‘A bunch of little goblins everywhere (all laugh) – look one of them – no just messing. No we’re really lucky that so many people have just been consistently coming to watch us for years. And like a lot of them being our friends but then when it started to branch out and it wasn’t just our mates coming to watch us anymore and there’s people coming to each show it’s sick. I think our crowds look really cool at the moment. I like a dead energetic bouncy crowd.’
Anything you guys would say to bands that are just starting out and haven’t grown as much as you guys – anything you’d say to them?
Cavan: ‘Don’t, don’t stop, no matter what happens just keep going cos all it takes is one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted, so you have to go after it .’ (all laugh)
Joey: ‘I didn’t know if that was going into an Eminem song. (laughs) What would you say Charlie?’
Charlie: ‘Yeah just if you’ve got the drive just go at it. If there’s no passion for it there’s no point. That’s where I stand with it.’
End Of Interview. (Tom falls very gracefully off of his chair).
Watch the interview on YouTube here!
