Will Power

Still somewhat in their infancy as a band, Will and the People have been treading the DIY track since the five individuals' paths crossed for the first time at the Glastonbury Festival in 2010. The five instantly clicked, moved to London, found a 17th century barn in Berkshire and filled it with an array of outboard studio gear to rehearse and record their albums.

“We started over the love of the same music, some of us being at school together as well, and just that love of being at festivals and playing for people and making that sound all just fit together so well to a point that in 2010 we were just like, 'Let's start a band',” says frontman Will Rendle in quite a matter-of fact tone. “We're just in the same place which is nice and rare – getting five or six people with the same agenda isn't easy.”

Somehow the five manage to pull their influences together – a hybrid and eclectic mash of Bob Marley, The Beatles, Supertramp, the Police and even Jerry Lee Lewis – and spit it out with a tidy pop sound that has seen them blow up in the Netherlands, sell out shows all over the UK and support everyone from Vampire Weekend and Paolo Nutini to Kings of Leon, Plan B and Girls Aloud.

“Holland, of all places, is where it's at for us,” he laughs, reflecting on his band's successes to date. “We just landed a few gigs and one thing led to another – we got an agent and just booked us some gigs and before we knew it, we were on the radio and playing festivals in front of 30,000 people. In a weird way, it's a bit surreal and hasn't really sunken in because we're not at that point with any other country at all. It's nice to know that a few other bands like Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers kicked off in Holland before anywhere else as well. We've been at this for two and a half years now and it's just incredible that we can head there and do that in 1000-seater venues.

“Back home, it's getting bigger and bigger. Our UK fanbase is like a cult fanbase, it's ever-growing as we play more and more festivals. We got some big ones this year – Super Garden Party and got onto the main stages and stuff but, still, are we no means as big in England as we are in Holland. I just think it's about doing the homegrown thing, keep doing it ourselves so we can do just what we want to do. It's wicked that we're doing it in Holland without having to sign a big record deal or anything like that.”

And they're prolific to boot, with a first album out in Australia only earlier this year, the band has just dropped their second – Friends – prior to a fully-blown tour, but in the meantime, they're assembling even more material for a third record. “Oh, it's just pre-production stuff,” frontman Will Rendle laughs. “We've got all our gear set up in the living room and we're just making lots of noise. Living together, we've been writing a lot and we're working on our third record and this one will be a collaboration with the writing side of it all. The second record has two or three songs that we wrote together but there's a whole lot of tracks over the last two records that are ones I've written over the last two or three years – we just wanted to play them and get them recorded.”

Armed with a diverse subculture of genres, the band lists grunge, pop, ska and even house to describe their sound, but as Rendle explains, he feels reggae is the key ingredient. “Reggae is our underlying theme – it's always there but there will be incidences where I've been away at something for a weekend and seen a bunch of electro and I'll come back like, 'Right we're going to make an electro album'. Obviously that doesn't happen, but we seem to be able to get it in there somewhere still – it morphs more into a more tangible Will and the People vibe, I think it's just fun to play with sounds and different kinds of music.

“There've been a lot of people I've met, like DJs who sit in studio, and I quite admire that, their attention to detail. Doing that is a whole other ballpark but listening to an old Bob Marley record is where the essence of live, recorded music lies – something like Could You Be Loved or Chances Are.”

This spontaneity or ultimate live sound is something Will and the People tried to capture when recording their most recent album, Friends. Rendle admits that, while optimistic, this may never actually happen. “For our second album, we tried to make that our blueprint, to have that live sound. People like Bob Marley and a band called Sublime, that I love, and The Cat Empire – people that don't always get on record what they truly are. I am quite into that, it's fucking hard to – there's a danger that we'll never be able to do that. I want our third record to really define us and capture our sound on record.”

You certainly can't say Will and the People don't work hard – two albums this year and as they sit poised on a second Australian tour to boot. Rendle speaks with genuine affection for Australia and their rapidly swelling audience down here. “We came at the beginning of the year – February/March, I think it was – and it was our first tour, it was really low key and that was for our first record,” he explains. “That tour was the highlight of our career to date, we went to Asia and then down to Australia. We were just so excited about everything – going somewhere with our music, we just felt like superstars, even though we were playing some shitholes. I'll never forget that tour and it felt like six years of playing by myself finally started to pay off.

“The second album just came out in Australia so we'll be there soon to promote that and I can't fucking wait, it'll be so good. We had a great time – my favourite memory was when we went to Nimbin, near Byron Bay – it was fucking beautiful. The vibe in Australia is so chilled out and it suits us to a fucking tee, you know? We felt very at home down there and will definitely make the most of this trip, that's for sure.”

Will & The People play the following shows:

Thursday 13 Decemeber - The Tempo Hotel, Brisbane
Friday 14 December - Sol Bar, Maroochydore
Friday 21 December - Great Northern Hotel, Newcastle
Saturday 22 December - Upstairs Beresford, Sydney
Thursday 27 December - Woodford Folk Festival
Friday 28 December - Woodford Folk Festival
Saturday 29 December - Woodford Folk Festival
Sunday 30 December - Peats Ridge Festival