High Span, Kevin Younger’s band, visit Hastings from Rochester

TUESDAY 1 JULY – JENNY LIND

ADVENTURES IN POP

8pm – FREE

THE HIGH SPAN are: Kevin Younger: vocals, guitars, keys / Mark Aitken: bass / Jimmy Moore: drums /Sarah Post: backing vocals

I had been planning to work on some songs of my own, and in 2018/19, a little after Vic Godard moved on to a different line-up of Subway Sect (he revived the 1981 crooning phase band), I had some time to do it. I met Jimmy in Rochester at a real ale festival, he’s Canadian and had played bass in some bands there (notably Rusty, a pretty popular grunge-era outfit) and he told me he was playing drums and interested in doing something.

Mark and I go back many years, to the 80s, in local bands. He has a good arranger’s ear and a similar musical sensibility, and it seemed like between us we had the beginnings of something. We did a few rehearsals and it came together into something quite interesting-sounding, adding Sarah on vocals after a few gigs has helped us with a lot of new ways to arrange the songs.

The name The High Span comes from a now-extinct council estate flatroof pub of that name, chosen in 1962 to reference the huge new motorway bridge across the Medway. I thought it sounded a little psychedelic – while containing a secret message inside for locals who would remember the rough old boozer in Rochester’s Troy Town neighbourhood.

I was in a few local Medway bands as a youngster, The Train Set, The Herbs, Let’s Go Naked, Ye Ascoyne D’Ascoynes (Mark was also in those last two). I moved to London in 1986/87 and was in a few bands during the 90s/00s up there: Planet of the Apes (combining my liking for garage/trash and easy listening music), Baby Birkin (French 60s/70s pop – we did an album produced by Russell Senior of Pulp), and I was in noise collective London Dirthole Company and a few others, and joined Armitage Shanks on bass for a US tour in 2007 which turned into a long-term thing.

My own stuff at this time was in a group called the Speed of Sound, formed with members of Planet of the Apes and Baby Birkin: James Medd and Debbie Greensmith (X-Men/Headcoatees), plus Pete Momtchiloff from Heavenly. We did an album, really two albums, which because of label shenanigans we released on one CD ourselves.

I was in Vic Godard’s revived Subway Sect from 2008 to 2017, and toured and recorded widely with him. I’ve also explored the world of improvised and experimental music with the ‘neolithic drone’ trio Hand of Stabs, formed with two Rochester mensches of my acquaintance.

Working with Vic was a big deal for me as I’m a fan from way back, and I’ve always been a fan of quirky, intense pop music, from 60s garage bands and psych folk, through postpunk and outsider rock. Velvets, TV Personalities, Fall, Scott Walker, Daniel Johnston, early Roxy, Bowie and Sparks, Buzzcocks, Love, Orange Juice, Ivor Cutler and the Kinks, to name but a few.

What do you love about music and a life in music?

I suppose I feel that I’ve got to create something. I’m an introvertedly invisible middle aged person who’s not an accomplished singer or musician, but I feel compelled to share whatever it is I do with music. And there’s something really humanly essential about engaging with other musicians and the listener.

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How does The High Span fit into your musical journey?

It’s quite a revelation to me that, as a band, The High Span gives me the freedom to make these wispy ideas and fragments of melody into something real. I’ve been quite prolific in getting songs together – I tend to have little sprints of writing – and we’re really keen to get the new stuff out there. We’ve got a second album ‘in the can’ and we’re rehearsing and playing out the songs from it and a third, which we plan to start recording this summer.

Tell me about Rochester as a place to live and make music.

I was born here and moved back even before London got impossibly expensive and pushed out the creatives and freaks that made it interesting. A lot of people are still around, Billy Childish is still very much a mover and shaker, Bruce Brand and Mick Hampshire have constant new material, ex-members of the Prisoners, Dentists, and a host of unknown others are still working on projects and going to gigs – along with several new generations of bands. The perennial problem is the lack of a medium-sized 150-500 capacity venue like almost every other medium sized place has, but that might be why the odd Medway dynamic emerged in the first place …