BBC: Chris Helme is here, formerly of The Seahorses of course, and now with his new band The Yards. A North Yorkshire musician and with a gig on tomorrow night, indeed in North Yorkshire, at a really quirky venue on the North York Moors at Blakey Ridge...

CH: Yeah, Blakey Ridge pub... it's weird 'cos when I was a student at college, we used to go down there all the time, and it's this pub just on a ridge basically, with nothing else around within a 30 mile radius. We've done gigs outside there and we're doing a gig inside this time, as it's too cold...

Mmm... outside at this time of year might be interesting...

Yeah...It's a good place though. Very errr spooky... bit like "An American Werewolf in London" type of area.

You find it hard to believe a live music venue at a place like that can survive, when you look at places like Fibbers in York and the struggle they have, with population all around. Yet you get somewhere like The Lion and it still manages to attract both the bands and the audience.

Yeah, well we get about 200 and odd people every time we play down there and I think it's only supposed to hold about 150. People come from all over.

If there's any fire officers listening - that was a joke!

And you don't have to turn it down either, 'cos there's no neighbours!

Before we talk about The Yards and what's going on at the moment; The Seahorses is what you're known for and I gather this gig re-connects you with one of them for the first time in a long while.

Yeah, there's a band called Mozer who are also playing and the lead singer is actually Andy Watts, the old drummer from The Seahorses, the one that played on the album, and it's gonna be weird 'cos I haven't seen him since the band split up... and... ermm... we sort of fell out (laughs)... But we're really good mates now, we've smoothed all that over. So it's gonna be quite strange, it'll be worth going down there just to see him anyway, he's a lot better singer than he is a singer and drummer at the same time, he's not compromising himself anymore.

Band life has always struck me as a very difficult thing to manage, unlike when you're on your own and have ultimate control . I look at bands and I see all the compromise that has to go on...

The difficulty with The Seahorses was that I thought we were a band, but John was pretty much ruling the roost, but without us actually knowing it, until we split up. And then I did a solo thing after that, but it is quite a lot of responsibility to get what you want and make sure you keep on getting it... it gets a bit tiresome after a while. So I decided to get a band together and share the responsibility and delegate... (laughs)

So solo life has got it's own problems hasn't it. You're out there on your own, you're only responsible for you and if a night goes badly it's not like you can share the pain, if you like.

Or the blame - yeah! It's good though, 'cos there's seven of us in the band now, we've got a little string section, keyboards, guitar, bass and drums, and samples and stuff flying about. And all I do is write an idea for a song and then everyone will build on it, so it's not as if I've actually written it on my own either...

Do you like that? Can you give your songs away like that?

Well if you've started off with just an idea, you've not really formed it... so it's not really mine. I've just started the ball rolling and that's it.

You mentioned the string section there, and listening to some of the work on the website... I was wondering if having the string section influenced the way the music developed, or whether the music developed and then you thought "you know, what we really need here, we need some strings"... which way round was that?

When I was doing acoustic stuff, I could always hear strings on what I was doing, but I wasn't lucky enough to have bumped into Matt and James. And then when they joined... I don't know... I was really frightened of everything sounding too sweet, so I made sure that they liked the same sort of music as me, like The Velvet Underground and stuff like that, but some of the songs do need sweet things on them or they sound horrible. It's nice to have them there anyway, but they don't play strings on everything, they've got a whole wealth of gadgets they play around with. We've got some very odd samples, I think we've got George Bush on there somewhere.

That sounds interesting... I suppose people have got to go along to Blakey Ridge to hear just what it's all about. Where are you hoping this band goes. You've tasted a fair measure of success with The Seahorses, are you hoping The Yards can do the same thing and make a similar kind of impact?

Well, hopefully it will be different. I mean the way I did it, I was asked to join a band, where John had already got a deal and everything, so I didn't really feel like I'd done any work towards that or anything. Whereas this time, we're just playing the tunes, going round the gigs and if people like it, then we'll get rewarded for it, and hopefully that will happen.

It strikes me that success, and the business, is a terribly fickle thing, it doesn't seem rational sometimes when you see some great bands playing to virtually no-one and some terrible bands at the top of the charts.

That's just the way it is, you've got to have a scene going on... it's like, you pick up NME and there's this "New Rock Revolution" or something. The music's really good, I do like it, you know they've got bands like The Hives, The Strokes and White Stripes, but if you listen to what John Spencer was doing about six or seven years ago, it's not much different. There just wasn't that scene at the time, and there is now, so... It's just the antithesis of all the "Popstar" stuff, it was just an attack against that I think. I think that's why it's become so big - you know.

Can you see the pendulum swinging back, I mean, whatever it's faults, it's interesting that on TV's "Fame Academy" they actually do songwriting and the people on it the other night were saying it's the first time they'd felt competitive, suddenly they're songwriting, and they didn't care whether someone was a better dancer or singer, but if someone can out-write them they'd get really annoyed.

Well it goes round in circles doesn't it, it has been doing since the fifties, and rock music, whatever, everything goes in trends and it all repeats itself. It's just regurgitated a different way, that's all. But you know these programmes, I thing they're really dangerous, "Popstars" and things, 'cos if you imagine, all the pressure that you've got when you're actually doing it... and then when you get dropped at the end, like what happened to 'Hearsay, and everybody hates you. And it ain't their fault, it's only because the management have run out of ideas for them, not that they had any ideas for them in the first place! So what are they gonna do now? I don't really agree with that programme, and I think the people who actually organized it and made millions out of it are quite sick individuals, really. It's pretty much mental torture that they're putting people through - the people who are watching it as well!

And they do watch it in their millions, so I don't know quite what that says about the rest of us! Right, the gig tomorrow night then, all new music?

Ermm, there'll be some songs that people recognize in there, but we've been writing like mad with the band, so there'll be about five or six new tunes. But I think it was about a year ago when we last played at Blakey, so there's probably a lot more new stuff for that crowd actually.

And are there any tickets left for tomorrow night's show?

I'm not sure, best look at the website at www.blakeymusic.com for details.

Yes, and there's also the band's website at www.theyards.org with some music on there to download.

And it's free! Because we haven't figured out how to charge people yet! (laughs)

So get it while you can! Thank you very much for coming in and joining us.

You're welcome.

Good luck with the gig tomorrow night, and if people can't get up to Blakey Ridge, have you got more gigs planned in the near future?

Well there's a few planned, probably one coming up at Fibbers in York, hopefully in November. That's gonna be weird playing there, haven't played there for a while.

OK Chris, thanks again.