5 Hippie Cowboys in a van with a free open atmosphere and incense in the air. So began the first stop of the Circus . . .
Camden, London is well known for its alternative mindset, sprawling hippie market, peace-n-love and a few dodgy characters, so it was no surprise when Keylock’s battered gig van pulled up on the curb, smoke creeping out from behind the doors, to unload on a cold January morning last year. The venue: the Camden Assembly. The occasion: Keylock’s first official gig as a band.
I say ‘first’ as the band had decided to go incognito in the week leading up to this point, playing every night - sometimes twice - at small venues around the UK. A band never truly knows the strength of their songs until they gauge the reaction of a crowd, so they had to test the waters before they took the dive, as singer Jonnie Hodson details:
“I suggested that it was probably a good idea to not go on stage with a sold-out Camden Assembly and have that be the first time we ever played live together, so I went and booked a bunch of small club gigs that I knew would pay us okay and we could get out and do it. That way when it came to picking a set list for the Camden Assembly show, we would have an idea as to what worked and which songs flowed nicely together.”
The night was young, and so was the band as the first step of their time together had just begun. It would be filled with good times and electrifying music - including the rocker “Deep in the JuJu” and a cover of Edwin Starr’s belter “Twenty Five Miles.” However, what also stands out is what happened before the show had even started. . .
Just a day on the road can be exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure - and here these wired hippie cowboys had been living out of a van for a week. The mind and the conversations wandered to strange and unfamiliar places as the wheels outside kept on turning, the rain kept beating down, and home seemed a long way away. It occurred to organ player Thom Carter that as he opened his eyes, he was seeing the world through a haze of purple-blue smoke. The window of the van looked like a halo of light in the distance with the van's interior cavernous and dark and his bandmates' faces coming and going like hilltops in the clouds. As Thom recalls:
“This was all Jonnie’s fault! We’d spent a couple of days in a flume of incense and god knows what else that was coming out of numerous burners twelve hours a day. Jonnie had been tending to the ‘vibe', keeping sticks of incense lit all around the van, which had slide windows that barely opened a crack, and by the time we got to London I felt like I’d turned bright green. Jonnie is essentially bulletproof to any pollutant, but I was knocked out by the smog - provable incense overdose! - and had to be carried out of the van to my keys.”
Being locked away in a room making music had built up an aura of excitement - the desire to play live and introduce their work to the world. It had been less than a year since guitarist Aaron Keylock and singer Jonnie Hodson had begun writing music together, but the band had already found their determination and inspiration, set on the philosophy that they had to keep up their hard graft, as Aaron attests:
“It’s funny looking back ‘cause I think you’re always looking forward. With every gig before, you look at what to improve on. Your next gig is always your best gig so it’s hard to look back at a show. It is what it is - a capture of the time.”
Still, the first stop of the circus flowed with excitement and energy. Jonnie describes the night as “. . . a big release of energy because we had worked so intensely hard on getting this thing together so when it came out, it was full of piss and vinegar and energy.” One can affirm this thanks to the footage posted from the gig, where energy pours off the band and rebounds into the crowd, freefalling purely from the music.
There is always something special about the genesis of a band when the air is still new and the atmosphere of what is to come is endless and unfathomable. Thom looks back on the early days of the band with fondness and laughter: “You don’t really know someone until you’ve spent a week in a van with them. The friendships in the band as well as the musical relationships made for a really valuable time. It was a really good start despite the incense."
As the band walked out onto the stage, the first thing they could see was a huge bundle of Nag Champa burning in the darkness. . .
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