The Luka State Interview January 2017

First of all, what was it that inspired you to get into music in this way and to form the band?

I come from a really musical family and when I was a kid my uncle and cousins would play guitar at parties. So it kind of just naturally ended up with me trying to play guitar too. It’s always been my dream to be in a band and tour the world and my Dad has been very supportive of me over the years. Always pushing me to be better. Then one day he surprised me. I think it was my 15th Birthday and he’d popped over to Liverpool and bought me a 1970’s telecaster. I still play it today. Anyway, years later I found out it actually used to belong to Bill Ryder Jones from The Coral. He can’t have it back. It’s mine now!

Tell us more about the choice of ‘The Luka State’ as your name

The band is named after this incredible guy we met in Toronto years ago called Luca Gismondi. He had such a carefree, positive attitude to life and state of mind that we just had to name the band after him. It’s The Luka State of mind. Positivity above all else and we do everything we can to keep negativity out of our little bubble.

You’ve had a bit of a break in between putting out new songs but you’ve created the Youtube show ‘Listen to This’ in the meantime, what gave you the idea?

Yeah we took a break for almost a year to record our debut album. When we self-produced our Mini Album “The Price Of Education” in 2015 we always sort of saw it as a dry run, an experiment, for recording our own debut album, which is what we did. Sam our bassist produced the whole record under the watchful eye of Dave Eringa (Manic Street Preachers) and Chris Sheldon (Foo Fighters / Feeder).

When you spend day after day after day writing, demoing, recording, re-recording, for an album you just need some time to sort of refer you mind and your ears, so we all started going to gigs to wind down. People should go to gigs more often, there’s really great music in every city in the world, and it was from finding all these new unsigned bands we thought “isn’t it a ****ing shame MTV doesn’t support rock music anymore”. So we decided in our own little way to try and do something about it by launching our YouTube show.

Do you believe it’s just as much of an important part of your work as a band as your music?

Everything we do is important. Everything is 110%. We live the band onstage, off stage, in the studio. It’s what we do and who we are. Come and see us live and you’ll understand we’re never going to stop doing what we’re doing.

You’ve also played at various house parties and people can request you to play for free at theirs, how did you get into this?

Ha! Those are loads of fun. Go to thelukastate.com/houseparty to sign up and we’ll come to your house and play a gig in your living room for you and your friends completely for free. Doesn’t matter where you are. If we can drive there we will come to you. There’s nothing better than being so close to your fans that you can see the whites of their eyes.

You’ve just released the music video for your song ‘Lies Lies Lies’ which is an intense, very energetic song. The video was equally as strong in its unusual and cinematic choice of storyline, what was the thought process behind this?

The song is about my disgust at this ‘post fact’ world we live in. It’s not about any specific event like the lies around brexit or trump, but more the fact that people have too much trust in the media. We just swallow it down, with a warped interpretation that suits our own needs. Without even realising it we all want the world to be better but for own selfish reasons.

When we came up with the idea for the video, we wanted something gritty, visceral, and as in your face as we are on stage. We wanted you to feel like we’re stood in front of you screaming the song in your face.

Previously in the music video for ’30 Minute Break’ Thomas Brodie-Sangster was the lead as a male victim of domestic violence, something that isn’t covered a lot in media. Why was this theme important for you?

I used to work in a special unit at a school in my home town, Winsford, dealing with troubled kids that just can’t be put in normal classes. These kids had real problems at home. Not just money problems like most of us, but real problems and some of the stories they’d tell you about domestic violence really just made me want to cry, but you’ve got to put a brave face on it as you’re their teacher. 

That video for me was a way to get some of those emotions out and use our music to convey a message. We’ve come a long way musically since we released that song, but we’re still really proud of it and if even one person’s life has been changed for the better because they came forward and didn’t suffer in silence then it was a success.

What are your plans for the future?

Keeping busy. Like a busy bee. We’re releasing new music this year. A lot of it. Each one with a new music video which we’ve kind of fallen in love with doing, and then we’re going to hit the road. If we could, we’d play a gig every night of the week, 365 days a year. It’s what we were born to do

The Luka State’s new single ‘Lies! Lies! Lies!’ is out now.