Keylock – The Story So Far | Louder
Introducing Keylock, the new band from guitar prodigy Aaron Keylock and singer Jonnie Hodson.
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00:00Hello, I'm Aaron. I play guitar in a band called Key Lock.
00:09How's it going? I'm Johnny. I play... I do not. That was a good start, wasn't it?
00:21I grew up in Oxford in England. I sort of grew up listening to rock and roll through my parents, really.
00:27And I started playing guitar when I was eight. I just got lessons from the teacher in the next village to me.
00:33He kind of got me into blues, listening to B.B. King and Robert Johnson and things like that.
00:37So I went to local jam nights, blues things and that, put my own band together.
00:41And we sort of did that for eight years. I released a record.
00:44When you're a guitar player who sings a bit, you're limited to what you can do.
00:59And after an album, or maybe two albums, you start to feel restricted in what kind of stuff you can put out.
01:06Doing a whole new thing with a big band, to me, was refreshing and something that I wanted to do.
01:14I was on holiday when I was about seven or eight.
01:24I went to a car boot sale and got a cassette of the Sweet's greatest hits.
01:28And I was just fascinated. Pop music hadn't really done anything for me when I was a kid.
01:34I wasn't really interested. And then all of a sudden there's all this lay of harmonies and guitars and stuff.
01:39And I was totally sold on that kind of 70s glam rock sound.
01:53And then from there, I was just a huge Queen fan.
01:56And Queen toured with Paul Rodgers in 2005. I must have been about 12.
02:01I just fell totally in love with the idea of being a singer. Paul Rodgers just blew me away.
02:10And then from there, I went about trying to copy his vocals and get that kind of style down.
02:22Quite a big ask for someone who's 13, 14 years old, trying to sing like Paul Rodgers.
02:27I kept kind of plugging at it with bands in Liverpool.
02:40And then Aaron got in touch and suggested that he was looking for something new.
02:45We started off just either jamming to blues or meeting up in songwriting.
02:49But then all of a sudden, with all this music there, we were just like,
02:52OK, now we have to put something together and now we have to form a band.
02:55I can't come back to someone like that currently.
03:25What's on the record is those guys. There's not a whole lot of...
03:29There's not big orchestrated strings or there's not 17 guitars.
03:34So there's not been a thousand takes of the vocal. It's just honest and it's real.
03:39And it's more often than not musicians playing live in the room together.
03:43When it hits you and you kind of get it and you understand the honesty that's inside that music
03:48and it's not like the dog can go hide behind.
03:50You know, it's more about playing and what's inside and getting that out.
03:55Just great songs and honest songs.
03:57I think if you get that and that hits you, I think that's kind of who you are.
04:02My dad took me to see the Black Crowes at Brixton Academy when I was eight or nine, I think.
04:08And that kind of changed things for me.
04:11That was when I sort of realized what true rock and roll was.
04:26I think to me, at their prime, they were the last true great rock and roll band that really stood for everything that rock and roll was about.
04:42I feel like there's a tendency for people now to go, oh, it's only three chords.
04:57We can't release a song that's three chords. Yeah, you can.
05:00It's all about how the song is, how the song sounds.
05:06It's not a science experiment. It's music, it's feeling. It hasn't got to be precise.
05:13It's just five guys playing music that they love, enjoying themselves, and I think coming home is a good introduction.
05:36Yeah.