Interview: David Jaggs of Raggamuffins

3:43pm Thursday 8th May 2008

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CLITHEROE band The Raggamuffins recently opened the towns latest music venue, The Grand, which has been transformed from the old cinema into a £3million multi-purpose music hub.

Now the band have released their first EP and have even started getting their songs played on the radio.

We spoke to lead singer David Jaggs.

SO WHO ARE YOU?

Singer and guitar, David Jaggs, 24; drummer, Richard Nicholson, 20; bass guitar Paul Heck, 22; keyboard and singer, Julia Gilchrist, 20. We all went to Clitheroe Royal Grammar School and practise in the village hall. I am also the manager of the band and work as our promoter.

INFLUENCES?

We all listen to a really eclectic mixture of music. I'm known to speed around listening to Public Enemy at full blast, Richard is shamelessly prone to a bit of Bon Jovi now and again and Julia likes drum and bass. The kind of areas we all tend to agree on are what influences our music - '60s pop, Northern Soul and great lyricism from people like Dylan, Costello and Morrissey.

WHERE DID YOU GET YOUR NAME?

Well, I'm renowned for being a bit of a scruffy so and so, having an utter obsession with trainers and wearing them (tastefully chosen of course) with suits, which is probably a cardinal sin. But I really liked the name and then discovered that in Jamaica there are gangs who have an obsession with the latest designer trainers and so on and so forth, called Ragamuffins. It fitted our style of music really well, we thought.

BAND HIGHLIGHT?

Any time we get played on the radio or somewhere is so exciting it's untrue. It just makes all the hard work, sleepless nights chopping and changing lyrics and melodies, driving across the country to play a gig in the middle of nowhere - everything like that - worthwhile!

IF YOU COULD PERFORM ONE OF YOUR SONGS WITH ANY ARTIST WHO WOULD IT BE?

Good grief, it'd be nice to get Miles Davis in to play the Paul's trumpet part on Paint By Numbers live, because class as he is he can't play phat lines on the bass and trumpet at the same time. It really was crying out for it on the record with the Northern Soul feel the song had. Either that, or maybe getting Trevor Horn or Phil Spector in to do the orchestration in on a song called Daydreaming, which is about getting kicked out of the old Heaven and Hell Club in Blackburn.

WHAT DO YOU SING IN THE SHOWER?

Hmm... there exists documentation of me singing Led Zeppelin's The Immigrant Song in the shower but nowadays it's more likely to be Duffy's Mercy. Anything ridiculously out of range is fun to do. I must sound bloody awful but it's a good place to sing and stretch yourself as you're less likely to strain your voice.

BEST MUSIC VENUE?

If this can mean "Blackburn and beyond's best musical venue" I'd have to say The Aspinall Arms,near Whalley. They've been really good to us there, giving us our first gigs, an opportunity to debut new songs and play our original material. In Blackburn I'd say the Cellar Bar inside is terrible as it's not really suited to the acoustics of our type of more jangly, layered music, but outside is fantastic. We absolutely loved playing there last summer.

• See the Raggamuffins live at Bar Java, Darwen, on May 25.