It’s well known by now that the Carter brothers are really talented and versatile musicians. Both brothers, Frank and Steph Carter, left Gallows to pursue other music outlets. The Ghost Riders In The Sky is Steph’s new band and his new approach musically. We caught up with him to know more about his band and what motivated him to start it.
Long gone are the days with Gallows, which you left in 2013. How do you feel now having your own band, playing the music that you love the most?
It’s really nice actually. It’s been a really good change of pace for me. When I finished up my time with Gallows, I knew it was my time to move on from the band because at the time I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing. I thought that with the transition from my brother [Frank Carter] leaving the band to have a new vocalist in, so the band had kind of fallen flat a little bit and it was kind of a shadow for myself. I needed my time to move on with them. Now I’m with The Ghost Riders In The Sky, now I finally got to go and it has taken a long time to get where it’s now because my wife Gillian, who’s our vocalist, she’s from America and so we had awful issues with getting the right Visas for Gillian to come over so that we could be the band, work together and so that we could get married…
How long has the band been together?
There were a lot of processes and formalities that went along with it and in the end, I think realistically the band has actually being a band all the time we’ve been doing things together… Maybe for the best part about six months really. It has just taken four years to have those six months together because of all of the Visa issues, the work issues and things like that, but now everything is good, everything is working, the album is out and people seem to be really enjoying it, which is great for me.
What led you to jump all in to something that really excited you, which was starting your new band The Ghost Riders In The Sky?
I wrote the songs for The Ghost Riders In The Sky because I wanted to write something that I was happy with. I never thought that anyone would really listen to them to be honest and I always thought that about Gallows as well, I could never believe just how many people were into the band, but you know I’ve never joined Gallows and I’ve never started The Ghost Riders with the intention of becoming big and have people knowing it. I just wanted to write some songs that I would like to listen to, that’s it. [laughs]
Surprisingly – or not – your musical approach on The Ghost Riders in the Sky is completely different from what you did back with Gallows. You blend old Americana with Brit-rock. What records or bands were a massive influence to you as a songwriter for this band?
I was living in America with Gillian when I wrote the majority of the album. While I was there writing the songs, she lived in a little town in West Virginia called Shepherdstown, it is a beautiful historic town with a small population, and there weren’t a lot of people there. If we wanted to go out for dinner it was like a half an hour drive away. There was a little grocery store up the street in a 20 minutes from there. So, I felt really secluded while I was there. I didn’t go out and tried to make a big effort to make friends with anyone while I was there, because the only person I was there for was Gillian, so I focus all of my time into writing songs and I was listening to a lot of Johnny Cash. He’s a very big influence for me. He always has been in all my writing, but more than that I’m a very big Pink Floyd fan. The soundscapes that band can create while maintaining relevance in what they do and also keeping the listener engaged in something that I’ve always tried to put into my songwriting. I love soundscape music, I love instrumental music, I love progressive rock… But, at the same time, I like scaling it down into 4/5 minute songs that could be listened to as opposed to 20/30 minute music pieces where you can get lost in them because from my perspective, I’m just trying to think when I’m writing music I want to keep myself engaged in it and entertained with it, so I need to make like scale it down a little bit. Aside from my influences in the band – for me Johnny Cash and Pink Floyd are the two main ones, – Gillian is a massive Beatles’ fan. She’s the biggest Beatles’ fan I’ve ever met in my whole entire life actually. That’s her biggest influence. When we’re driving around, we often listen to the Beatles in my car. They’re the godfathers of pop music, they started it all really and going across to the other side of the world where you had Elvis and Johnny Cash pushing the Americana side of it. When I started writing it, I never set out to write music that sounded like anyone else. I just wanted to write and see what happens, and I think with The Ghost Riders we’ve actually come up with something that’s quite unique in a way that’s like British/Americana indie rock’n’roll, which certain genres shouldn’t really work together because they’re so different, but somehow we managed to make it work.
“I wrote the songs for The Ghost Riders In The Sky because I wanted to write something that I was happy with.”
What’s like your approach while writing music for The Ghost Riders In The Sky?
When I’m writing music, I just write and see what happens, and sometimes it comes out sounding similar. There’s no process to go into, it’s just a case of seeing that in my guitar and seeing what happens. I get ideas in my head and it’s about getting them on paper. After I get something down, it doesn’t necessarily fit the vibe of the band, but then I’ll rework it backwards. So, I’ll write first, get the idea out and then I think “Ok, it’s a cool song, but this isn’t really suitable to The Ghost Riders” and then I’ll rework from that point backwards and be like “Ok, how can I rework this backwards?” Instead of playing power chords in the songs, I play open chords and invert its chords to bring in these drumming patterns and swinging the way I’m strumming as opposed to playing straight and playing on B and on the push. I just write and see what happens and then at the end of it, I think “Can that go on an album? Yeah, that can go on an album” or I leave as it is. [laughs] Sometimes the song ends up sounding completely different the second time around. [laughs]
How do the rest of the members get involved with the songwriting?
I’m still writing the majority of the material. When we did the first album [The Death of Everything New], 90% of the music on the album was mine. The lyrics were written by the other two vocalists in the band. Now moving forward, Gillian is the lyricist of the band and so she’s in all of the vocals for the band, and I’m writing the music for it, but the way we’ve done it with the other members who are the drummer and the bassist I write the skeleton and structures for songs and I’ll lay down a real rough drum track and a rough bass track so that I can get in my head how I want it to sound like. When we’re going into the practice room, I play the song through and then I’m like “Ok, give me what you’ve got for the drums” and then we’ve kind of worked from there. With the bass player, I just give him the idea for the song and he just kind of does his own thing and just runs around with it. The dynamic works quite well. I’m looking forward to moving further into album 2 and see what we can just create in the studio without me pre-thinking it because the minute the album is very much focused on the sound I have in my head and I like the natural process when you have all the people involved so that other people can put their juice into what’s going on and so the album becomes less stagnated and more free.
Gillian has a more important part in the lyrics. What can you tell more about how she approached the writing for your debut album The Death of Everything New?
A lot of the lyrics for the album were on kind of a state of how things are in the minute in the world from our point of view. “Wastelands”, for example, is an important fact in how the world is not in a good place at the minute, shall we say it’s in a bad spot, so that song focus around the feeling… the animosity you do feel towards things and how people feel trapped and there’s no scape. From the second point of view – from other tracks on the album like the song “The Death Of Everything New”, “Dark Love” – those songs are more about me and Gillian being apart from one another and how difficult that can be… Without going into too much detail, we spent an awful time apart. When I was actually recording the album, Gillian was in America for the entire process of recording the instruments for the album. She missed the entire studio time and when she came back Gillian and I sat down and just done all the vocals on our house. The album is a mismatch to what’s going on in the world right now versus the personal feelings into what I have to my life into Gillian’s life and how moving forward things can be quite difficult in the way that separation can really play overcome how you feel.
“…I think with The Ghost Riders we’ve actually come up with something that’s quite unique in a way that’s like British/Americana indie rock’n’roll”
Are you currently working on LP 2?
Yes! I write music all the time. I recorded the debut album myself and my friend helped me mix it and I mastered first on myself, so literally the whole band is DIY down to everything, apart from my friend Chris who’s doing our press because that’s another like mammoth I could not touch. The masters for the album were actually finished in June of the last year, so as soon I finished mastering it I felt like I needed to do something and so I’ve just started writing new songs then. I’ve actually been writing the new album even before I’d finished mastering the first one, so I have a handful of songs already finished for LP 2. I’m willing to process now and do more, but I’d like to try to get the LP 2 out maybe this time next year, if not at the end of this year. I want to get the next album out soon.
Your brother Frank – who had also parted ways from Gallows – has been in other music projects. Do you guys exchange ideas or demos of what you’ve been up to?
Yeah! When Frank started The Rattlesnakes, he came to my house and I recorded all of the vocals for The Rattlesnakes’ demo in my bedroom. We are constantly talking about music ideas and exchanging things. They’re in the studio working on The Rattlesnakes album right now and I dropped some of my guitars and amps so they can have more sounds to play around in the studio. He’s a very big inspiration for me musically moving forward because I think my brother is a very creative person and he’s very good in what he does. I send him ideas and stuff I’m working on and he sends me stuff he’s working on. It’s nice to be able to bounce these things around with people who are just going to be honest with you.