For a band who has spent most of their short life gigging – perfecting the jagged, off-kilter builds and shape-shifting choruses of their songs live – it makes sense that fans could sing their words back to them before Little Grandad had officially released a single. It’s a rapid ascent matched only by the speed of their formation: aside from brothers Jack and Harry, they were familiar faces who knew of each other but had never played together until an open mic threw them together. Another such night gave them their first taste of an audience, and by the Monday after, they were jamming on their first single, Sleepwalking.

The buzz has moved just as fast. Cutting their teeth in front of Windmill’s silver fringe curtains, they’ve since racked up hundreds of gigs, and armed with little more than SoundCloud demos and handmade CDs, they’ve built a following that’s primed for what’s to come. No small feat considering Harry [Lower] only picked up a guitar at eighteen, Jack [Lower] is still paying off his bass on Klarna, Ned [Ashcroft] got the first electric he actually likes two months ago, and James [Brennan] carries his sticks in a backpack.

Now, having released two singles, with their third, Babe, We’ve Run Out of Time, out today, they’re honest about still being a little wet behind the ears, revelling in hearing their songs morph in real time, and proving that the best way to practise is to play, loudly, in front of people.

Shana Chandra: I read that you guys first properly met at an open mic night – tell me about that.
Jack Lower: It was an open mic night that Ned used to go to quite regularly – he was the king of open mic nights.
Ned Ashcroft: Yeah, you could do it in a way where you could do three in a night if you got your timings right.
JL: We knew each other through mutual friends, but at this open mic night it was literally just us three and the guy running it. We were basically playing songs to each other and thought, “Oh cool. This works well.” Then we went to another one called North 19, a pub in Holloway. That was the first time we messed about in front of people.

SC: What were your first impressions of each other?
Harry Lower: I remember Jack listening to some of Ned’s songs, and really getting into it. We all really liked his songs and enjoyed singing them – it’d be so catchy, you’d be hearing them all week.
JL: One of them was Sleepwalking, which we then released.
NA: At the open mic night, we thought, “Let’s just have a rehearsal and see what happens.” On the Thursday night we went to a Mary and the Junkyard gig at Fabric – Jack was their tour manager, and I used to live with them, and we had a party back at mine. Between that Thursday and the Monday, I wrote two tunes, one of which was Sleepwalking. We fucked around with that on the Monday. It was a pretty short and intense period.
JL: Me and Harry are still getting used to being pals. We’re brothers but we weren’t that pal-y when we were younger.

SC: You two kind of started the band—was there a defining moment when you knew this was what you had to do?
HL: Me and Jack would go to gigs, get inspired and think, “Damn, we need to work on stuff.” We’d try to envision what we were going to be, but when we were envisioning it, we didn’t think it’d be like what we have now.
JL: Yeah, we went through two albums [worth of songs] before we got to the music that we’re on now.

“We went through two albums [worth of songs] before we got to the music that we’re on now.”

SC: The music would’ve changed heaps through that process?
HL: I feel like I found myself through it. I used to be a bit more lost, trying to follow things and be someone else. Now I do feel more myself through it all, and what we are isn’t trying to copy people.

SC: Do you think that happened because of how many gigs you’ve played? How did it change you musically?
JL: It actually just made us presentable. [all laugh]
NA: It gave us a lot of confidence. Every time we played somewhere new, at a bigger stage, or a different type of gig, I’d always get nervous around soundcheck.
HL: We’re getting less nervous. Life is just a journey of getting less nervous over time.
JL: We did our first gig [at the Windmill], and then he gave us like twenty [gigs], so from the end of July to the end of the year, we were pretty much averaging one gig a week. I reckon we would’ve surpassed nearly 100 gigs in our first calendar year.

SC: Wow.
NA: We’re pretty good about being self-critical after a gig, too.
JL: If you see us after a gig, we think it’s the worst gig ever.
James Brennan: But I like Jack’s idea of looking at what went well.
JL: At my school, you’d have a planner with a ‘WWW’ – what went well – so we started doing that with the band.
NA: It works well because you write it down, and afterwards you’re like, “OK cool, let’s go get a beer.”

SC: So true, writing it down extricates it from holding it within you.
JL: It’s much less toxic.
NA: We really, really want to do this long-term and forever, so we have to keep improving.
JL: It’s also about remembering the lessons – not just ones we’ve learned ourselves, but from other people. We’ve toured with all of our favourite bands, and they’ve all taught us something cool.
NA: We did a different tour every month, and each band – Thistle, Man/Woman/Chainsaw, Cardinals – taught us a different set of skills.

“I reckon we would’ve surpassed nearly 100 gigs in our first calendar year.”

SC: Jack, you were a tour manager – how did that influence the band?
JL: I think I brought a lot of EBIs to the table – the ‘even better ifs’ – from watching so many people, thinking about what made Mary and the Junkyard so good live. There’s so much more to being in a band than what happens on stage. There are unwritten codes.
NA: We used to have a lot of big arguments about running over, having sets longer than thirty minutes.
JL: I’d rather underplay than overplay. I’ve been bollocked by promoters for overrunning.
JB: Didn’t you get taken into a room once?
JL: Yeah, just like at school. I remember I walked in with Mary in the Junkyard. The guy was telling us off and Clari [Freeman-Taylor] was like, “Are we going to get sued?”

SC: You’ve played so many gigs, has there been a memorable one for you?
JL: I’d say Left of the Dial. We didn’t have any music out, but we’d started giving out CDs of our live set and putting demos on SoundCloud and someone knew our song. We were like, “This is surreal.”
JB: This Dutch guy goes, “Sleepwalking!”

SC: Harry, James and Jack, you’ve only picked up instruments relatively recently, do you think that’s been an advantage?
JL: I really believe so. If you aren’t able to put more colour on a song, it means the lyrics can come through more. As a band, you can easily fall into a trap of putting your stamp on things too much.
NA: It gives us somewhere to go.
HL: I need to learn so many chords.
JL: I’ve still got to learn the fretboard. I only play on the view of the strings.
HL: I need to start writing songs in other keys.
JL: Harry just writes in G major.
HL: It’s easy; you just know it. We need to start posting our stuff online, but I’m worried that people are going to realise the simplicity of it.

“It was an open mic night that Ned used to go to quite regularly – he was the king of open mic nights.”

SC: They don’t sound simplistic. They’re melodious, but there’s a chaos in there that seems spontaneous. Is that by design, or natural?
JL: We got our own rehearsal room really early on because we enjoyed it so much. I think by playing the songs, more and more gets added by accident. Our songs are really erratic.
NA: Harry’s notorious for not repeating a section in his writing.
HL: Yeah, I don’t like doing the same lyrics a lot.
JL: He likes to catch the listener out by changing the lyrics of the chorus.
HL: You’ve got to listen to a song like three times before you get the grip of it.
JL: One of the beauties of live music is that you get to evolve the songs as you go. Then you capture it for a record and it’s probably different by the time you come to see us live.
JB: And they already are, to be honest. We’ve just recorded something that we’ve changed a lot.

SC: Tell me about the band’s name.
JL: We messed about with a few names, but the main name was ‘Jack and Harry’ at the start – it was how we used to sign off our Christmas cards, as brothers. Ned was like, “Do we have to be called Jack and Harry?” [laughs]
NA: We were out with Martial Arts, who are a band we get on with well, and I remember saying, “Yeah, I think we’re called ‘Jack and Harry,'” and Matty, their guitarist, was like, “I’m not sure about that name.” [laughs.]
HL: I wanted something that felt really true to us. We had a really tall grandad, ‘big grandad’ and a really small one, ‘little grandad.’ He was quite a creative human and used to express himself a lot artistically, and I felt like it was fitting.
NA: I remember seeing Matty from Martial Arts again and saying, “We’re called “Little Grandad”now,” and he was like, “Oh, cool.” I was like, “Sweet. We’re set.”

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