Intro
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Anyway, this feature is about casting the spotlight elsewhere, today we’re talking about (and to) Leeds (Featherstone*) band, Sons Of Sevilla, founded by two brothers pictured above, Reuben and Henry Smith.
I came across them back in October, a Thursday night, they were supporting shop favourites Kit Sebastian at The Deaf Institute. Ahead of the gig there was little mention of the support act so it wasn’t really on my mind, but I always try to get down early when I can. On this occasion me and the two friends I was travelling in with were running slightly late, but made our way into the venue just as they were playing what would prove to be the closing track in their set, a song I later found out was called ‘Street Light Moon’, currently unreleased. The live band was 6 strong, with Reuben on vocals, accompanied by a small midi keyboard for the odd cameo, Henry on rhythm guitar, and 4 trusted pals to help them flesh out their sound with bass, slide guitar, drums and keyboard. Usually when arriving at a gig I would head straight across the room to the bar before getting settled, but was instead stopped in my tracks by what I was hearing. An acoustic fronted sound, a bit ‘Desire’ era Bob Dylan, a dusty vibe. It brought Dan Auerbachs solo work to mind along with his other project ‘The Arcs’, shades of ‘Hermanos Guitierrez’ also. I logged a mental note to check them out afterwards. Finding out more didn’t take too long though, I bumped into who I recognised to be the singer (Reuben) whilst leaving the venue, and said how much I enjoyed the small part of the set I saw. He mentioned that they had just got back from Texas recording an album and asked if we were familiar with Black Pumas (little did he know he was talking to a record man…), as Adrian Quesada from the group had produced it. In the coming days I saw snippets posted on their Instagram story of clips from their sets at London’s Jazz Café, and in Bristol the following night, which sounded great. Other than the few posts on social media though, there wasn’t too much info out there, as it turns out these were their first live shows together. It was a band I was looking forward to hearing more from and was keen to find out more about. Given interviews are something I have wanted to do for the website for a while now, this felt like it could be a good place to start, I reached out and a call was arranged. Read below for an insight into their journey up to now.
Their first release on vinyl, ‘Lullabies For A Wildcat’ via Ubiquity Records, is due at the shop soon, which you can pre order here. The first 5 purchases will get a free ticket to their upcoming gig at The Snug next February, details here.
The Main Part
Ahead of talking to Reuben and Henry, it was clear that 3 places were important to the story so far, Leeds, Sevilla, and Texas. First up though, we’ll head to Leeds, well actually – Featherstone, a town just outside of the centre, where they grew up in the family pub. Just 18 months apart in age, you can imagine this offered a lot socially growing up, but it also exposed them to some great music. With their dad being an avid music fan, there was an album club on Thursdays, ‘The Cat Club’ where producers of a featured album would come down and talk about it, names such as Andrew Weatherall and Owen Morris passed through.
Henry: ‘Everyday all day, from the morning to night, the atmosphere at the pub was being dictated by the records’
Some early favourites in JJ Cale, Nino Ferrer, and Neil Young are noted as influences. It was interesting to hear though, that despite the early exposure, making music together is something that never even entered their minds until much later on.
Henry: ‘I was always in a band, and Reuben was always playing football. I don’t know why we never had a conversation about making music together.. it never even entered our heads’ ‘Everything else we ever did we were inseparable, we’d knock about together every minute of the day’.
This is where we get onto the first mention of Sevilla. As referenced above, Reuben was playing football a lot, and to a pretty good standard. He was in the Leeds academy as a youngster, before moving over to Sevilla to play in their academy at 16. It’s not a place either brother was unfamiliar with though, as it was somewhere the family would regularly holiday to. Reubens time in the academy there was unfortunately cut short though, an injury meant he had to stop playing not too long into his stay.
Reuben: ‘That’s the link anyway (to the band name), we’d been going over there for forever, but I also did play football over there’
Henry: “and a friend of ours years before once said ‘if you ever start a band you two you it would be good to call it sons of sevilla’”.
A key moment that led to the brothers eventually doing so was when Reuben picked up a keyboard from his grandad when we was 19 or 20.
Henry: ‘Reuben started getting a bit good on keys and then all of a sudden he was singing a little bit.. just as every musician I had ever played with had sort of fell away’
Reubens knack for the keys led to him recording some music himself that he was able to get released via Soundway Records, ‘Warm Nights’ in 2020, then ‘Sounds From The Workshop’ in 2021, before ‘Da Cuckoo YaYa’ released via Ubiquity in 2023 (now in stock btw!), more electronic, funk, balearic based stuff. During this time though, their initial recordings as Sons Of Sevilla were sat dormant on a hard drive. They had started making music together during lockdown, in April 2020, which is what has become the ‘Lullabies For a Wildcat’ record, though they refrain from calling the set of songs a ‘proper’ record.
Reuben: ‘I wouldn’t even call it an ‘album’, it’s just a collection of songs’
Henry: ‘Some of the songs have a bit of JJ Cale influence, then others just sound like lads from up north, it wasn’t meant to be all on one album, until we were like fuck it’
Reuben: ‘It was a long time ago, i was 22 just turning 23 when we did them, i’m 27 now so it is a long time ago’
Henry: ‘We did send it off in lockdown but to no avail’.
Reuben: ‘No one listened to it, world was shut’.
They talk quite flippantly about it, but despite the low-key home production, the strength of the songs shines through, and it’s clear that the brothers bounce off each other really well.
It wasn’t until a conversation Reuben had with a friend years later about ‘cowboy music’ (the best kind of conversation) that he was prompted to revisit the music he had made with Henry in lockdown, as it fit the bill of some of their recordings. Listening back with fresh ears, Reuben was motivated to try and get it out again.
Henry: ‘It was the first bloke he messaged’
Reuben: ‘Yeah I messaged Michael McFadden on Instagram, who owns Ubiquity’
Henry: ‘When Michael said how interested he was it was a no brainer’ ‘It was just timing, they were looking for a different kind of outlet’
After the record was picked up, real life took over for a little while, with Henry looking after the pub, whilst also having a baby on the way, and Reuben was busy with work after completing his sailing courses (a topic that if I had time would have picked up on more (!). Maybe for the follow up?).
Henry: ‘We always wanted to try get the band set up in a place where we didn’t have to-‘
Reuben: ‘Slog around and play to four people’
Henry: ‘when you’ve got a kid, and Reubens got a good job, it needs to be in a good place’.
As mentioned way back at the beginning of this piece, when I first met Reuben he told me that they had just recorded some new stuff with Adrian Quesada from the Black Pumas, I was keen to follow this up and find out more.
Reuben: ‘He’s (Adrian Quesada) got a big warehouse in Austin somewhere, it came about because we said to Ubiquity, we’ve recorded these first ones in a shed with no gear, we didn’t even have a mic or headphones, if we’re doing this we wanna do it properly’ ‘So we got talking, and Mike’s (McFadden) good mates with Anton Newcombe, we were nearly gonna end up with him i think –‘
Henry: ‘I don’t know if he (Anton) knows about that..’
Reuben: ‘Well Mike was gonna ask him or something like that.. He had a link with Adrian anyway then reached out to him’
Henry: ‘So in April (2024) we went out there’
Reuben: ‘We tried to go over there with as much as we could, all the songs, we already had them all written’
Henry: ‘He (Adrian) weren’t writing anything though’
Reuben: ‘He was really good, he’s a right good bloke. He weren’t over controlling, just a right good atmosphere’
Henry: ‘We had a guy called Chico Mann who sessioned on it‘
Reuben: ‘Herbie Mann’s son Geoff Mann played drums.’
Henry: ‘It was mad, they were all sound’ ‘I was thinking before we went we were gonna need a few days to rehearse the tunes, and we didn’t, they just managed to make it work’
Reuben:’ We only had 5 days, so we had to go in with as much as possible, no time for messing around’.
Henry: ‘when you look around the room and you’ve got Adrian on bass, Geoff Mann on drums, and Chico Mann on the other guitar, and just these two kids from Feath’ sat there it’s just like.. really nice’.
Though a date hasn't been put down for when we will hear the new album, their first proper studio effort, they hope to have it out at some point in 2025.
With the recording finished, on returning home they managed to get a support slot with Kit Sebastian, one of the shops favourite purveyors of Turkish/psychedelic sounds, which as noted at the beginning, is how i came across them, full circle.
Reuben: ‘They were ace live, and they were nice people’
Henry: ‘That all panned out through Polly, we’ve got the same agent’
On the response to the shows, they’ve been pleased with what people have had to say.
Reuben: ‘It’s been good, yeah.’
Henry: ‘Someone said we sounded like Khruangbin meets…. Black-Eyed-Keys?’
I’m going to guess the person intended to say Black Keys rather than Black Eyed Peas..but the best thing to do is draw your own conclusion by coming to The Snug in February to find out if Reuben and Henry will cover ‘I Gotta Feeling’…
At the Manchester gig, i mentioned that it was a struggle for me to find out anything about them as the support act beforehand, this seemed to have been the same across the other shows, though it was more amusing than annoying for them.
Reuben: ‘When we played at Jazz Café it said ‘Kit Sebastian and the psychedelic duo’ haha, i don’t know who they are’ ‘We did get a lot of people asking though ‘who are you?’
Henry: ‘We got a moody message from someone saying ‘you weren’t on the poster we didn’t know who you were!’
Reuben: ‘You need to start promoting yourselves better, it was really good! They said’
As I said to them at the time though, if you’ve got people asking after / tracking you down as a support act, that’s probably a good sign.
Lastly, on their plans for next year.
Henry: ‘Next year we should be playing all year round really, i think that’s the plan’
And with that, we said our goodbyes and wished each other well. Top guys.
Thanks for reading, and hopefully see you at their gig at the Snug, one not to miss.