I first met the Irish Band 'The Ocelots' during a concert organised by 'The Munich Sessions' in my favourite coffee shop and hang out place Lost Weekend in my hometown Munich in March 2016.
I was immediately amazed by their lyrics, their beautiful melodies, and charming personalities. We exchanged a few words and I knew from that day on they had a new fan.
In December they had another gig at Lost Weekend and I took the chance to interview the twin brothers Ashley and Brandon Watson (19).
The beginning of a music career
Blasting News: How did you start your Music career?
Ashley: I always knew a few chords on guitar from doing music lessons early as a child. In our fourth year of school, we start bringing in our instruments to school at lunch time and jamming with our friends for fun. Our favourite bands were 'The Killers' and 'Kings of Leon' and we tried to learn all their songs and play them together. That year, we were around 15 and we signed up for the school's talent show. We didn't have a name and barely knew how to play any instruments but we needed to participate in the show. 'The Ocelots' was the last minute talent show name our friend suggested to us to save us just putting down 'Ashley Watson Band'. After the Talent Show, we went busking every Saturday for some pocket money.
A local pub in Ireland asked us to play every Tuesday, so then we used our free time to work on a 2-3 hours set to play regularly at the Pub. After a few months, we decided to work on our original music and travel around Europe.
Playing in Europe
Blasting News: Where in Europe did you travel first?
Brandon: The first place we went to was Munich.
We didn't organize anything in advance. So we arrived in Munich and happened to meet Jackson and Patrick, the organizers of the 'Munich Sessions'. They really liked our music, so they put us on the list for the next show. We met up then and the show went great. We even played with the famous Australian band Boo Seeka. So thankfully we slowly built up a fan base in Munich.
Afterwards, we travelled to mostly every city in Europe, doing shows and busking in places like Paris, Rome, Barcelona, and London.
Blasting News: What are your plans for the future?
Ashley: For the future, we want to keep travelling throughout Europe and America and hopefully finance ourselves through touring a few times a year. Currently, we are working on songs for our EP and plan to release 2 or 3 singles next year also.
Blasting News: Many of your songs sound very autobiographical, for example, the song "Shoot me darling." Did you write it from your own experience?
Ashley: That song actually was inspired by an episode from "Twin Peaks." It's one of the first songs we wrote. I wrote it to experiment with different techniques of songwriting.
Blasting News: What about the other songs?
Brandon: When we were starting writing songs it happened a lot that some younger bands got criticized for not having much depth in their writing because they haven't experienced love before or were lacking enough life experience.That's why we decided to travel. We wanted to make new experiences to learn the paths of life that weren't academic. A lot of our songs have been written while away from home and out of our comfort zone, this way we think we can get a greater hook on writing creatively and with more story. We write about events that have occurred while travelling and about relationships we've had as we have grown up.
Blasting News: Thank you very much for the interview and best wishes for your career!
