Who’s in the band and what is your role?

I’m McKinley James, singer\ guitarist and primary songwriter. Oscar Mccan is on drums, bringing the thunder, triplets and groove and then Mike Mccartney on bass , bringing the filth.

Whats your origin story?

Well, I met Oscar when he played a gig as the drummer for my little sisters band, Nell Chadwick and The Music, and I thought he was fantastic and distinctly remember thinking at the time ‘I might nick him!’. I’ve played in the garage/psychobilly band The Mighty Interceptors since 2018 and we’ve done loads of cool gigs but I wanted my own different project to satisfy the need to make psych rock/ neo garage. I’d been trying to form this band for about five years unsuccessfully. The only reason it’s called McKinley James And The Flat Tops is because I couldn’t find any band members to commit full time so I thought it would be me as a static member and then a revolving line up. Then I drafted in Mike and Oscar, they liked it and didn’t immediately leave and now I look like an egotistical pseudo rock star for naming the band after myself and feel a bit of a prat…

I met Mike at uni (BIMM in Birmingham) during one of the freshers events. We both got on well straight away both being mature students and coming to the conclusion that freshers was crap. He knew all the bands and musicians I talked about, I even resorted to testing him with weird obscure delta blues players from the 1930s and he knew those too. He is indeed, the real deal. We went to the pub nearly every day after uni, got very drunk and talked about music and life and we knew we should start a band. Initially I joined his band , the midway, on bass to play a couple of shows and do a load of rehearsing which was great fun. He then joined the Flat Tops on bass, andwe did a gig. He decided
he preferred being in the Flat Tops to The Midway, knocked that on the head and now we are going full steam ahead. Flat tops are go !

My personal biggest influences would be The Cramps and The Sonics for that old school garage filth. My favourite band in the world are King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. I love the fact that they are insanely prolific and just try their hand at any genre they fancy. That’s kind of the blue print of the Flat Tops. We want to be the second hardest working band in rock n roll. I don’t think we will reach thirty albums in fifteen years however and five albums a year like Gizzard is insanity but we are gonna give it a bloody good go. Frankie And The Witch Fingers and The Psychodelic Porn Crumpets remain a massive influence for our neo psych leanings and also bands like The Fruit Tones for good old raw rock n roll and Wine Lips for some face melting psychedelia.

Do you adapt your sound between shows?

Not yet, but we will do. The plan is to release two albums per year and cover a multitude of differing styles. We are only two gigs and two studio sessions deep so far. We’re in it for the long haul and the process of writing the follow up to our EP ‘First Impressions” is well under way. Raw sixties inspired garage rock is the theme for the first one and then a more modern, jam based and experimental record is also being plotted and schemed. How would i describe our sound? Evil. Dirty. Uncompromising. I like nasty sounding guitars, I like Oscar to play drums like John Bonham reincarnated. I want Mike to be channeling his inner geezer butler. The sound will constantly evolve but evil, dirty and uncompromising has a decent ring to it, eh ?

What’s your favourite song to play live?

If i was going to pick one of our own songs, I would say ‘Green’, a big psych rock jam. Mike and Oscar go hell for leather on their respective instruments and it represents us pretty well. As it’s early days and for the first two gigs we had to pad the set with some covers, i would say my favourite of those is either ‘Wiley Coyote’ or ‘Sally Sensation’. Both Billy Childish UK garage bangers. ‘Sally Sensation’ has to be played last because it shreds my vocal chords to bits.

What are the highlights of your music career so far?

Well, this band is in it’s infancy so I’d say playing a few times with The Interceptors at Bedlam Breakout was very special as it’s a festival i’ve attended since I was fourteen. One of those Bedlam performances included Gaybuel from Demented Are Go and Kev Haynes on drums because our drummer got ill and couldn’t play the afterparty! Playing to a great crowd in Germany with the Interceptors was also massively exciting and my only gig on foreign soil. That was a dream when I first started gigging so nice to check that one off the bucket list. Watch this space and i’m sure I can fill this question with flat top shaped answers in the future!

What’s coming up in the future?

Loads of albums, loads of gigs , loads of writing, just enjoying being in a band. We are going to make a proper go of it. We’re going to the toppermost of the poppermost.

Did you always know what kind of music you wanted to make?

Erm , I’ve always wanted to make all kinds of music. I started with blues, then garage and psychobilly and then psych rock and all things in between. I just like writing songs to be honest. I’m sure my musical exploits will evolve over time

Are your lyrics in character or based on your life?

A mixture of both to be honest. Some are very real personal experiences and some are exaggerated versions and some are straight up fantasy.

What’s the song or moment that made you fall in love with rock n roll?

Probably sitting on the lap of my uncle in my dad’s little window cleaning van on the way back from the train station when he had just arrived from London and him saying, ‘you’ve got to hear
this’ and then piping ‘PVC Chair’ by Demented Are Go into my ears through his iPod. I was probably about ten and it was the most insane music I’d ever heard!

As told to Nick Constantine