The Bitter Lemons have to be the busiest band in the Midlands, if not the UK. Only a few days before our conversation, they were supporting StarCat in Birmingham. “Absolutely amazing,” says vocalist Hayley James, “are you feeling alright yet Michelle?” “Just about, just about,” agrees drummer Michelle Dawes, “lots of blisters from dancing. No, it was absolutely amazing, it was really cool. We got a really good reception!” “I think Dave [Browning, guitarist] and I had a really weird moment about three songs in,” explains bassist Richie James, “because it was really dark and then suddenly like the house lights came on and both of us were looking for a way to put it. There’s people here and they like it.”

As if that wasn’t enough, they played Blackpool Boneyard Weekender only a few weeks before. “The Boneyard was wild in every possible way,” explains Hayley. “It was pretty nice people,” says Richie, before Hayley continues. “Just lovely, lovely, lovely human beings. I think every band absolutely smashed it. The venue’s amazing. The sound was amazing. I don’t think we met anyone who wasn’t just a lovely human being.” “It’s a very accepting crowd.” “Dave, what was your highlight of the Boneyard?” Put on the spot, the guitarist explains. “She’s talking about my little… So there weren’t just bands there. They also had local artists and things like that. And there was a guy there who did the posters for early old classic horror films, like Evil Dead, he did a Cramps poster….” He’s talking about legendary artist Graham Humphreys “There’s just a bit of a… What do you call it? A bit of starstruck moment. “I’ve never been seen you starstruck before!” Hayley exclaims. “[Not even when we met] Adam Sandler when we played at Gas’s Rockin Blues,” Richie jumps in, “And you were talking to him. We were star struck by Adam Sandler.” “He didn’t stick around that long,” Hayley says, “He was at the venue, and then Stella McCartney was there at the same time, and she did say for a bit of it, to be fair…” Browning continues his story about meeting his favourite artist. “I was just looking at his artwork. And I went, ‘oh, I like that current piece’. He was just like, ‘yeah, it’s my reimagining of what I would have wanted to do in the first place’. I went, ‘what do you mean the first place?’ He went, ‘oh, I designed ‘Off The Bone’ [by the Cramps], the cover of it’. I was like, ‘what?!’ Just so casual about it as well.” “I was just incredibly starstruck by Guana Batz and Hillbilly Moon [Explosion]”, Hayley reveals, talking about the lineup she shared at Blackpool Boneyard, “because they’re both like two of my favourite bands. I was like, ‘as if, as if!’”

Fans of the Bitter Lemons will notice a lot of changes since they burst onto the scene in 2023. For one, Dawes is a new recruit. “How many gigs have I done? Three, three, three, four. No, it’s been great so far. Been brilliant. Really good.” How did she get involved with the bands? “Got stalked a whole lot,” she says, completely deadpan, “just had a random message quite late at night. It’s weird.” Hayley clarifies:  “he very late night message happened was because our friend, Mazzy Snape, who runs a lot of pub nights and puts bands on and stuff in Brum, when we said to her that we were desperately looking for a drummer, she in no uncertain terms said, ‘you need Michelle. You don’t want her. You need Michelle’. And it was like, ‘oh, okay. All right, I’m going to send this Michelle who I don’t know, who doesn’t know me, a do you want to be in my band text.’ Then within a couple of days, you were like, ‘have I joined a cult?’ Ah, you have joined a cult!” “The pictures of the dogs pulled me round,” laughs Dawes, referring to Hayley’s profile picture of an adorable Labrador. 

There’s also a whole host of new songs in the works which have regularly been popping up in the Bitter Lemons’ setlists. “There’s at least three new ones from the last EP that we’ve got in the set,” Richie reveals, “and then we’ve got probably another five written. That I say written, they’re not written. Sort of, in the works, basically. But we’ve got a month’s break of gigs after Bank Holiday, so we’re going to work on them. They’re pretty much done. Most of them are gigged in, I think they’re some of the best stuff I’ve written.” “The first record was a different guitarist, different drummer,” shares Hayley. “Both of them have their own sound, their own feel, so the first record sounds very different to the second record because second record is us plus Dave plus different drummer. This next batch of songs again sounds pretty different. I think the sound that we’re much more settled on in terms of we all feel like we’ve got our creative element in it.” “It’s got a bit more edge to it, I think as that’s the thing for me. It’s got a bit more guts and balls to it.” 

One of the new songs, ‘Curds and Whey’, features Hayley and James swapping roles. “So, you played bass since you were fourteen, but you just haven’t played in the bands since that point,” Richie says to Hayley. “I was in like a death metal band when I was fourteen, so it doesn’t really count…” she laughs before Richie continues. “I kind of wanted to sing on it and you were like, ‘I don’t want to just be stood there doing nothing’. You picked it really, really quickly.” “Well, loads of people have said as well, ‘oh, Richie should sing more’.”Because I do a bit of backing on things and that sort of thing anyway….” “Yeah, but you do write the songs. So there’s certain songs where it makes more sense when you sing them.” “I would say so. And we’ve got another maybe one or two or that might follow the same theme, so we might just have a little bit of variation in the set to sort of get [Hayley] on bass and get me on vocals for a little bit.” “As well, we watched Hillbilly Moon [Explosion] do it recently, they do it where Oliver [Baroni] and Emanuela [Hutter] swap bass and lead vocal. And we were like, ‘you know what? We should just do it. We’ve been talking about doing it for ages, they can do it!’”

It’s been less than a year since their second EP, ‘Heart Ache Shake’ was released, and the band are very happy with the whole experience. “The actual experience of recording it was really nice,” says Richie,  “It’s always a bit of a case like, you know, we’ve done a recording, then you write some more stuff, you kind of just want to move on to the next stage of it now. So like the new songs are kind of interested in us more than anything now. Yeah, that recording was great, but you know, it’s about the next stuff now.” “We did [the recording] with another Kate, Kate or Catherine, and they were studying at the Birmingham Conservatoire. So we had studio time that they could use as a student. We were really lucky to get in and do that kind of collaborative thing where they got some excellent studio time to hone their craft and we got to do some recordings. But some of the songs… ‘My Time’, I think, is it the third or fourth iteration of that song?” Hayley asks Richie. “It started off with me and Dave playing it when we were like in our twenties and it was very, very different. Sort of metally-not-metally, punky blues, I don’t know what we would describe what we used to do. Then I played in a punk band and we did a punk version of ‘My Time’ and I sang it. Then during that time, we did like a country version with that band just because we did an acoustic night, and it always worked quite well like that. That’s why I sort of picked up that then with Lemons in terms of we needed some songs for recording: ‘actually, I’ve got this one. I reckon, you know, we sort of like make it a country rock and roll song. It’ll work quite well’. So yeah, it’s third iteration, I think, because I probably wrote it when I was like twenty two”. 

It’s been less than a year since their second EP, ‘Heart Ache Shake’ was released, and the band are very happy with the whole experience. “The actual experience of recording it was really nice,” says Richie,  “It’s always a bit of a case like, you know, we’ve done a recording, then you write some more stuff, you kind of just want to move on to the next stage of it now. So like the new songs are kind of interested in us more than anything now. Yeah, that recording was great, but you know, it’s about the next stuff now.” “We did [the recording] with another Kate, Kate or Catherine, and they were studying at the Birmingham Conservatoire. So we had studio time that they could use as a student. We were really lucky to get in and do that kind of collaborative thing where they got some excellent studio time to hone their craft and we got to do some recordings. But some of the songs… ‘My Time’, I think, is it the third or fourth iteration of that song?” Hayley asks Richie. “It started off with me and Dave playing it when we were like in our twenties and it was very, very different. Sort of metally-not-metally, punky blues, I don’t know what we would describe what we used to do. Then I played in a punk band and we did a punk version of ‘My Time’ and I sang it. Then during that time, we did like a country version with that band just because we did an acoustic night, and it always worked quite well like that. That’s why I sort of picked up that then with Lemons in terms of we needed some songs for recording: ‘actually, I’ve got this one. I reckon, you know, we sort of like make it a country rock and roll song. It’ll work quite well’. So yeah, it’s third iteration, I think, because I probably wrote it when I was like twenty two’. 

“So we released that with El Dandy Records,” Hayley explains,  “It was part and parcel of appearing at their Blues at Moonlight Festival Released as part of that festival appearance. We now have absolutely none of them left. We keep having to tell people if you want them, you’re going to have to get them direct from El Dandy Records. We don’t have any more!” The whole lineup of last year’s Blues at Moonlight were excellent, according to Richie. “One that is apparently finished up now with Best Bad Influence, but they were really good. They were really nice lads.” “They were the low key MVPs of that whole festival,” adds Hayley, “I think they bought the entire back line all the way from Scotland. Then it was absolutely lovely to hang out with Lexi and Nick from they look like Lexi and Riverside Boys. And they’re good friends of ours. So it’s really nice to spend the weekend hanging out with them. Who else did we enjoy? Oh, Joe and the jackpots. They’re from Madrid. And I think you’d be like them, didn’t you Dave?” “They’ve got a more kind of traditional blues sound. Yeah, they’re the first night, weren’t they? The Irish guys. They were really cool. Yeah, they were really good. “We went to get a really nice Irish breakfast as well. That’s all my memory about that!” 

Their next recording time is scheduled in for the end of the year at Stourbridge Studios. “The first record, we really liked it at the time, but in retrospect, we feel like it’s a bit clean,” says Hayley,  “a bit produced. The second one, you know, it’s got kind of more like a live feel because it’s in the Conservatoire. The third record, we wanted a lot more of a kind of grittier, edgier sound. And then we thought, ‘okay, so who on our kind of scene, local scene, whose sound do we like?’ And we thought, ‘well, we definitely really like Kings of Hong Kong’s recording sound.’ They recommended that we went to Stourbridge Studios, and he uses a lot of analog vintage gear. I think you get that kind of natural ambience that comes with the analog recording equipment. No idea what we’re recording yet!” “More than likely, the most given ones are three new ones that you’ve probably heard on those videos, but I reckon we can do four or five, and so therefore there’s space then to sort of have a look at the newest ones that we’ve got. But I think the whole thing with me is, I think the last EP was us finding our sound. I think we found it now and I think we’re running with it. So that’s the best thing for us. It’s just like this is the sort of fully fledged sound that we wanted. So really, really, really looking forward to it. Really excited!” 

He continues: “We just want to bring fun rock and roll back with energy and that is kind of like our mantra, an inclusive environment which doesn’t rely on having to be part of a big old boys club. Anybody can play in this environment if they’re good enough and can bring what rock and roll is meant to be. And when I say ‘what rock and roll is meant to be’, I mean the fact that it can be anything, it can be very different things, but not just exclusive. “We just put out a brand new logo which we feel represents what we do and what we stand for a lot more,” Hayley shares, “and it’s kind of like a lemon-shaped grenade. We kind of feel like that’s us. We will launch that lemon-shaped grenade into anywhere and carve our own space out. And while we’re carving the space out, we’ll lead the door open for anyone who wants to follow us!” 

With an attitude like that, the future is definitely lemon shaped.

Kate Allvey