Summer is banned
BAN SUMMERS Edge of The Wedge, Southsea Sunday,September29 wedgewood-rooms.co.uk
For several years The Boy I Used To Be were regular fixtures of the Portsmouth music scene.
Starting life as a solo vehicle for Edward Perry’s songwriting, over time it evolved into a fullyfledged indie band.
However, behind the scenes, as the band became more popular, Ed’s health was suffering.
‘I was getting more and more ill and what I could give to the band was becoming less and less,’ he explains, ‘and we’d all given so much for so long I think it got to a point where everyone needed to move on with their lives and it just kind of stopped. We thought that we’d maybe go back to it, but it didn’t really happen.’
It took months of repeated visits to various doctors and repeated tests to eventually reach a diagnosis of fibromyalgia. An incurable and sometimes debilitating condition, it can cause pain all over the body.
But Ed returned to action with a new project, the ‘soulful lo-fi’ of Ban Summers. And this Sunday, he releases his self-titled debut album with a gig at The Edge of The Wedge where he is joined by Frankie Knight, Hallan and Highlights Of Our Modern World.
Through that period of uncertainty, Ed continued writing.
‘There wasn’t really a stop between The Boy I Used To Be and Ban Summers. I was still writing through- out and I was thinking that this would be stuff that the band would do eventually. I just took a couple of years out and it got to the point where I was amassing more and more songs and they’d become increasingly personal so it made more sense that it would be this new solo thing I’d created.
‘It wasn’t even necessarily going to be my main project – it was just like an outlet at this really difficult time, which is what music has always been for me.’
Back in March he supported Havant’s indie-soul act Barbudo at The House of Rapture in Fratton. It was a watershed moment for Ed.
‘Over the last couple of years I’d only done about five gigs as Ban Summers up until that Barbudo gig.
‘At first it was kind of going back to the old Boy set-up – me and a laptop and playing guitar, but for a couple of weeks after each gig my hands would be really swollen from playing the guitar.’
It was using a Launchpad, a piece of hi-tech kit which enables him to trigger samples and clips at the press of a button, that proved key.
‘I can still change the songs around in some ways and play around with it. That Barbudo gig was the first time I played with the Launchpad and everything came together. It was quite a big event and quite busy and it felt like I’d got Ban Summers to the point of what I wanted in terms of performing. I had to find a way of making it more sustainable for me to play – knocking myself out for a couple of weeks after every gig wasn’t working.
The fibromyalgia has obviously forced Ed to change his priorities.
‘With the band, when you’re younger, it’s everything in your life, with Ban Summers it’s about everything in moderation, where I can still do the music and I can still play live, but it is just one part of my wellbeing.’
The album is being released by local label, Brutalist Records. Ed was contacted by label founder Sam Leadbetter after he put a song out as Ban Summers back in January.
‘I got a message from Sam and he wondered what I was doing as it was the first time I’d put anything out for a while, and we got talking about music and whether I’d be interested in doing something with him as he was thinking about starting a new label. He was saying: “If you want to do an EP or whatever...” Over a few months we’d meet up and talk for a couple of hours, and it was his enthusiasm that allowed it to go from an EP to an album. That support in the background from Sam enabled it to come to fruition. If that hadn’t been there, who knows, I may not even have released an EP by now.’