Interview Exclusive: Deja Vega
Words: Julia Grantham
Photos: Trust A Fox
Casually rotating between Instagram and Facebook one day -looking for anything music or gig-related that might excite me over The Christmas period- I spotted a poster for a Deja Vega gig, on a night I was free, but nowhere near my house in a town I’d never heard of called Darwen, in Lancashire.
Annoyingly, living on the other side of The Pennines and being skint, it was not an easy task to arrange going but it was worth the hassle and turned out to be one of the most fun and refreshingly cool nights out listening to music I’ve had in a while!
Deja Vega are a band who you could say have been a long time coming, and yet they’ve been together making music for over a decade. All three of them were born and bred around and about each other, school friends or youth club friends; not just a very cohesive three-piece band on stage, but off stage, their friendship and bond has been around twenty years’ tight.
Interviewing them under some twinkling lights, in an outdoor space occupied by only a tiny scattering of people, was a very natural
and exciting experience. Martin Blunt from The Charlatans had made reference to Deja Vega during a Q&A that he had done with Carl Hunter of The Farm, back in January 2019 at The British Experience in Liverpool. Popped Music were fortunate enough to be offered the chance to ask him a couple of questions. Deja Vega were his band to watch for 2019 he told the audience, and here we were almost exactly four years’ later.
Immediately, as the conversation started I felt a warmth, buzz and energy from all three band members, who were clearly as passionate about their music as they were honing their craft, image, sound, audio and visuals. There’s something about a clean and easy three-piece band that speaks to me. I always get the vibe that when a band is formed on a solid friendship, that it’s a band made to last.
I asked the band who the main songwriter is, and how the songs came together. Jack Fearon ( Vocals and Guitar) had this to tell me: “To be honest, we all write as a collective. A lot of our music comes when we jam together in the practice room, or at times I’ll have ideas and put that into a voice note, turn it into a guitar riff or a bit of synth. But it’s mostly as a full band that we write”. The theme of doing things together as a team, as a group of friends, was there from the moment we started talking. Or even before I arrived: I wanted to interview this band, as I already really liked their tunes, had met one member through a friend and we all have mutual friends. I would say that this is what the scene and our blog is at least in part, all about: supporting each other through a love of music.
Of their friendship and how they met, it turns out that Jack and Mike Newton (bassist) were in the same form at Secondary School, and met each other on the first day of school. “Hated each other, we did!” Mike joked. Tom Webster (drummer) said he couldn’t remember exactly when he’d met Jack, but stated that they’d met a long time before high school. Perhaps because they’ve all been friends for such a long time, and have been in Deja Vega for nearly ten years, and previously under another name before that, that, it is hard for them to remember when it all started. It seems very natural and organic.
Of their early musical influences, it transpired that they were into a wide range of different genres, from the backlash of The 90s as they put it; bands such as Blink 182 and Green day, and then as they approached their teens they got into heavy metal and in fact it was bands such as The Arctic Monkeys that inspired Jack to pick up a guitar. He had a very heartwarming story to tell me about a pivotal moment for him with the classic song ‘Fake Tales of San Francisco’ from The Arctic Monkeys debut album ‘Whatever People Say I am, That’s What I’m not’. “I actually remember during that time my Grandad had passed away, so I was sat round my Nan’s a lot. I was watching MTV 2 alone in the living room and I remember hearing Fake Tales of San Francisco”. It clearly struck a chord with him as he went on to describe the effect that song had: “I said to the lads: You need to hear this song!” Annoyingly though, in the pre-mobile-phone-n-google-era, there was no way of recording it, and it was later on by chance through a free NME giveaway CD that he finally found the song again, and took it to his mates at school. Just when I thought it was all about The Arctics, Jack excitedly told me that from there, bands such as Little Flames, The Coral and the general scouse scene was what followed as their influences. Mike told me “We used to go and watch The Dead 60s all the time”.
After hearing all this, and all the while knowing that I had heard about Deja Vega because of that earlier Q&A with Martin Blunt of The Charlatans, I told them it was time they went on tour with that band. Turns out, they already had, as their previous band: Dead Beat Echoes. Mike told me about it: “We did three gigs with The Charlatans, probably about 2012 and it was through Martin.” It may seem surprising to anyone reading this, that a band who had gone on tour with a band such as this one, had not yet become a household name. And yet in 2023, this is all too common. I remember a friend and fan of Deja Vega in a band called Hey Bulldog telling me of the industry: “Talent is about only one-third of it” when it comes to being a successful band.
However, interviewing Deja Vega was as refreshing as it was exciting because they offered another viewpoint. Realising and having gone through the motions of trying to get recognised, and asking for bigger bands’ help, after all this time they realised the value in being – as they called it- “DIY” and having organically made friends throughout their journey as a band, they have met friends who will do videos for them too, among other things. I found it very pleasing to hear, that rather than ever give up, they just keep reinventing the wheel and pushing themselves forward in the best way that they know how. On the topic of wanting to get signed, Mike told me this: “We did think we wanted that, but you’re just gonna sit around waiting aren’t you”. Tom furthered: “Don’t get me wrong, if summat come around, you’d probably take it, but for us to go out ourselves and DIY it, it’s worked better than we ever imagined it could have”. Loving this attitude, I wondered how this approach
worked and whether they had specific roles within the band but it turns out they all “chip in and do their bit”. Everything they do it seems in the band, whether it’s writing or updating their social media, they do it as a band. They do everything on their phones, Jack told me. All of their artwork and videos they do themselves! I’ve never known anything like it but maybe I’m a step behind.
In 2023, Deja Vega have already got a tour booked, with tickets on sale now. They are to headline five dates from March to April, starting with the legendary Brudenell Social Club in Leeds and ending in Gorilla in Manchester. I assumed they would be simply promoting their current album: Personal Hell which dropped in 2022, but as it turns out, much more thought has gone into it than that: “ Touring the album, yeah but we wanna show maybe the second half of that album, as well as play our older songs, we wanna play new songs that we’ve not played live yet. And we’re writing all the time”.
It was inspiring to hear that even now, after all these years, this band is as fired up and ready to go as ever before. Interviewing them, hearing them speak, and observing that they finish each others’ sentences and are bursting with love and enthusiasm for what they do, was as touching. If this band don’t keep on keeping on and getting slowly bigger and better, then it certainly won’t be their fault. Get involved, you won’t know what you’re missing until you come and join them!
Listen to Personal Hell here:
poppedmusic 