Six fellas with a shared grá for music joined forces three years ago and haven’t looked back since. The Leon Stax Equation are a soul band based in Galway, and it is safe to say they are leaving their mark on the Irish music scene! We caught up with Leon Stax, the band’s lead singer, to chat about their latest album release and what we can expect before the end of the year. Read all about it below….
To date, the band have released three albums, made it to #3 in the Irish Independent album charts, as well as touring across Ireland, the UK, USA and Mainland Europe. Leon is the second youngest in his family of ten. He has been playing in bands since he was 11 years old and takes musical influences from all genres.
At the beginning of May, The Leon Stax Equation released their third studio album, titled “In View”. These lads are bringing back old soul-style music, and Leon tells us what it’s like to start recording an album. “We get in the room and we set everybody up, we take time placing the mics in a way that everything sounds good the way it is, then we record everything together, which is the way it was done with a lot of our favourite old soul stuff back in the ‘60s. It's coming back into fashion now,” says Leon.
In previous groups recordin situations, they would “record one instrument at a time and try to get it perfect,” but now they are embracing the imperfections. “We like having little bits of mistakes, it is a really good representation of where the band is at. If you're playing well and you're rehearsed, those are going to be good performances,” Leon admits. This album just like their previous 2 Leon Stax Equation releases is self-produced. Though they had top engineers for the tracking process like Christian Best(Susan O’Neill, Mick Flannery) “We went for six tracks in two days with Christian and we got six tracks done,” Leon explains. “The vocals were overdubbed in another studio. There are one or two guitars overdubbed too only because sometimes there's more guitar parts in the song than we have people in the band”.
The barn on Leon’s family home in County Meath was the location for three of the tracks and much of the overdubbing. “I really wanted the music to be accessible. Because though I love experimenting, and I love doing weird, crazy stuff, I wanted to make music where people can walk into a pub anywhere when we're playing and they're think, ‘this is great’,” Leon shares. Reflecting on fond memories over the past three years, Leon recalls how it felt to hear the whole crowd singing along with your music.“it's very surreal, these are songs you wrote in your bedroom, then there's crowds of people singing them back to you.”
Gigging in Coughlan’s Cork for the Jazz Festival is a night these fellas will never forget. “We played to absolutely packed houses in Coughlan’s, a small venue, but they were absolutely ramped. It was on our sixth gig of the weekend, the last night of the festival. That could very well have been the best gig we ever played. It was unforgettable. The kind of gig you live for.”
With three months to go before the end of the year, The Leon Stax Equation tease new music. “There’ll definitely be more singles out before the end of the year. Collabs perhaps. And you can expect to see us on a few more stages. We play the Sugar Club in Dublin in December and the Cork Jazz Festival in Coughlan’s and the Savoy.”
You can find The Leon Stax Equation on Instagram @leon.stax.equation and Spotify @theleonstaxequation.
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