Hail Caezars as the rockabilly boys launch comeback and new album
As is so often sadly the way, The Caezars decided to call it a day in 2016 when the pull of every day life intervened.
While the Portsmouthbased rockabilly-punks had gained cult success, guitarist Danny “O” explains that it wasn’t enough to sustain the band members without them needing day jobs.
"We were touring in Germany and the van broke down,” Danny recalls. “I was on the side of the road wondering what on earth was going on, knowing that I had this law course coming up,” he has since become a practicing lawyer, specialising in music law, “and thinking maybe it's not the end of the world that
I'm going to be doing this (touring) on a less regular basis.
"You get to that point where world domination is off the table and you have to reassess what you want to do and how you're going to treat it.
"At that point we decided let's do a final run of shows and go out on a high in a way that we're all happy with, rather than letting it fizzle out.”
They played their final show at Nambucca in London and as Danny says: “We all left on very good terms, and were all still mates – we'd met up in the intervening years.”
Danny kept his hand in with Thee DB3 and fronting his own project, The Astrotones. The latter band released their well-received debut album in 2019.
“We did the headline tour at the end of 2019 which went really well,” says Danny, “and we we starting to build up momentum, but then the pandemic hit and we had two years of forced hiatus.”
They also lost a member for medical reasons, which further compounded their problems.
"We carried on as a threepiece for a little bit, but the songs I'd written didn't really work for just a three-piece lineup.
“We decided it's quite a lot of effort to dredge it all back up when we're down a member and we can't really play the songs in the way we want to, so we were going to honour the commitments we had and then it sort of fizzled out."
The Caezars’ bassist Steve Neller was also part of the Astrotones lineup, and it was at the Rockabilly Rave festival last year in Camber Sands that they bumped into Caezars’ vocalist AJ.
“I think we realised how much we missed hanging out on a regular basis. A good way to make sure that we did hang out on a regular basis was to put the band back together.
“I think AJ had had enough of a break by then, and for me the idea of not having a gig to look forward to was really alien. Since I was 17, I've always had a gig coming up. So when it was quite clear that the Astrotones weren't going to carry on, I was glad that AJ had had enough time off to want to do The Caezars again.
"We all agreed it would be on a less intense level, but you can only take it as it comes. If loads of people are trying to book us – which they have been – then you have to take each one on its own merits and maybe start being a bit more selective in the shows we're playing.”
And for their first show back, at The Barn in Milton on Saturday, they’re launching their self-titled third album. As Danny says, it captures the band in the raw: “We want to do it all live, straight to tape, and have an album that comes out with no digital interference – it's all analogue.”
For tickets go to book. events/pompeypunknroll.