Reid Morrison & Laurie Sherman - Albert Interview
A London Based band formed by Reid Morrison And Laurie Sherman who are also members of Treetop Flyers. The two friends grew up relatively close to each other in West London and were influenced by skateboarding, football (soccer) and artists such as Van Morrison, Dylan, The Misfits, The Beatles and Jackson Browne. The duo met while participating in separate bands, but as the universe would have it, they joined together and over time Albert was born out of the ashes of pandemic. In this interview we explore both Morrison and Sherman’s youth growing up, their influences and what led them to get into music, forming their post-Albert groups and of course their most recent project… Albert!
Tell me about growing up in London. What was your childhood like growing up? When did you first begin to fall in love with music? Was music relevant around your household growing up? Do you have any siblings?
LAURIE: Growing up in London was amazing. I grew up not far from Reid in West London. For me it was all about skating from the age of 10 onwards, music was always present, but was second to skateboarding up till I was 18, or so. I’ve got rad memories of doing kids gamelan music classes at the south bank and skating the famous spot afterwards each Saturday afternoon. The gamelan was cool, but I was more excited in the skating we would get to do after. Our house was full of music with the usual classics being played like Dylan, Van Morrison, The Beatles etc. but also a load of jazz and world music that I didn't get at the time as I was blasting the likes of Iron Maiden and Misfits. I’ve got a younger sister and two older brothers. The next brother above me Ted, is a really good drummer who I played in a few bands with when I was just getting started. He was already really good at that stage and had done session work and I could barely hold a chord on the guitar, but it was a great learning experience.
REID: I was raised in West London, not far from Laurie as he said, overall it was a good and an interesting childhood, it was very sporty and musical in equal measures for the first part of my life. I got my first guitar at about 7/8years old I think which coincide with a love of Elvis and 50’s music, I was also really into Football (soccer) but that all stopped really when I had to get a weekend job and found the joys of partying and staying out late ha! Music was always being played in our house by my parents, they loved the West Coast sound of the 70’s, my mum’s favorite was Jackson Browne and my dad loved Van Morrison, soul and a bit of Bob Marley Also Irish music. I’d have to thank them a lot for that input at a young age. I have one brother a couple of years younger than me, he loves music and still does but what shall we say, ‘a bit tuneless! Sorry bro! But It’s great to see the joy he gets from playing his 2 little boys music from our childhood and them enjoying it. The true musical circle of life.
What would you and your friends do for fun growing up? Who were some of our earliest influences in your more formative years? When and where did you see your very first concert and when did you realize you wanted to spend your life making music?
LAURIE: We would just skate all the spots in the city and film video parts and edit little skate videos to music we would discover in our parents record collections. My earliest proper influences all came through skateboard videos as you’d be exposed to such wide range of amazing music. But I’d say the ones that really stuck with me and made an impact were Black Sabbath, Peter Green and skateboarders Like Tommy Guerrero who were also making amazing music, like the soundtrack to the Forties Video, Amigos. Around 18 I started playing music with two childhood friends and there dad playing bluegrass and folk and that stage went deep into English folk and American bluegrass, listening to Fairport Convention, The Albion Band, Martin Carthy era Steeleye Span and Bluegrass acts like The Country Gentlemen and Dillards. Not sure what the first concert I went to would of been but I went to quite few with my parents growing up, Some memorable ones would be the Buena Vista Social Club, John Martyn and also seeing Davey Graham play a tiny club in Earls Court despite being pretty out there by that point in his life he still played amazing and it was incredible to see in real life.
REID: I was playing football twice a week up until about 15, so half my life was taken up by that, I was kind of a confused kid. A foot in both worlds really. When I started getting into music I would look for likeminded people to hang out with and Learn from, so I started a couple of high school bands and started to sing. When I first started though I was so shy I Had to face the wall when singing so no one could see me. My Folks were great for taking me and my brother to gigs early on, the first one I remember was Eric Bibb at a small club in Brentford of all places called the Watermans then Eric Clapton at Wembley supported by BB King, so I was fortunate for sure with early exposure. My first main big influence was Paul Weller, I got given a copy of Wild Wood and I was hooked! And quickly tried to be a mod. I love his voice and that album with its acoustic feel has always stuck with me. Then I did the usual clique of smoking a lot of weed and getting into Dark side of the moon and a lot of Dub! I also got really into the Coral and the Zutons around that time! Which led me into a exploration of all kinds of music... Beefheart, world Music, and obscure soul records. With the Coral It was just all so mad and weird but with such great melodies, pass it on is still one of my favorites, I guess it was around this time I wanted to be in bands, so the first of many bands were formed. I was bitten!
Prior to Albert, you guys also participated in Treetop Flyers. Can you tell me about this group? How did you guys initially meet each other and what was the initial chemistry like between you guys in the very beginning? What inspired you to form Albert?
REID: Treetop Flyers was my first real band where I put everything into it! It was my life. We all met around West London as we were all in different bands and we played at my friend’s night ‘Blue Flowers’ in Chiswick, So many bands played that night, laura Marling, Adele, Jamie T, Mumford to name, but a few, it was around this time that I got heavily back into 70’s west coast music and Neil Young! Laurie was in the Barker Band and the band I was in Morrison Steam Fayre was more, or less done so with an invite to Sam Beer, a great folk solo artist from the scene we all got in a room to have a jam, it worked and the pieces started to full in place when we got the rhythm-section from Friends Tomer and Matthew, it was exciting a lot of fun, We recorded a demo to get some gigs around London and that demo actually became our first EP ‘To Bury The Past’ which led to gigs around town. The boom of the ‘new folk sound’ was happening, so people dug what we were doing, although we felt a little outcast and different to what was going on, but we entered and managed to win the Glastonbury unsigned competition of 2011 which was great for our profile and meant we could tick off the Glastonbury box! We played 6 shows there that first year. We then went full speed ahead and made our first record ‘The Mountain Moves’ in Malibu with Noah Georgeson, (Devendra Barnhart’s, Right hand man) it was a dream come true to go over to the states to record, we owe a lot to a guy called Derek for that... Cheers Derek! Bands are hard work and through the years we had members come and go for one reason or another. We made a few more albums which went down well and toured as much as we could, but it was getting harder in all honestly. Our latest Album Old Habits was released at the tail end of 2021 and it was a great sounding record and the best one we had done for a while. For me personally the band was getting very stressful and hard to manage over the last couple of years as the focus and feeling had changed, it was getting me down and making me not like making music as much. Albert feels very much the right space musically to be in right now. I’ve got the bug again and it feels good.
LAURIE: Albert came from just going to the studio throughout the lockdowns and messing around with ideas just the two of us. There was a lot of listening to Gerry Rafferty at the start, I think the first thing we tried to do in the studio together was learn ‘Right Down the Line’. That style of a more chilled delivery in music really influenced the songs we went on to write and record for this record.
When and where did you guys make your live performance debut and what was that experience like? Tell me about writing and recording your 2023 debut single “Mona”. What was the overall approach to this track? You guys put together a full band for this song. What was the approach to bringing other folks onto the project?
LAURIE: We've not actually done a Live show yet as we've been focussed on writing and recording more material while we are in that zone, but are definitely planning to start playing live this summer. Mona was pretty much recorded by myself and Reid to start with, I even think Reid played the initial drums and bass. Once we’d got it to a stage we were happy with structure wise we got Dominic Brider of the Surfing Magazines in to redo the drums and then Charlie Higgs in to do the bass to the drums and our good friend Richard to record the Wurly. The final stage was to get Charles Watson who makes really rad music himself to do the amazing BVs and piano that you can hear on the song. It was a bit of backwards way of working and definitely more time consuming, but fun anyway.
REID: A lot of the songs from the new Albert album were influenced by Lockdown and Mona is about a failed Lockdown romantic endeavor. This was actually one of the first tunes we recorded where we were like, ‘we are onto something here’ it felt right! I do wonder if Mona knows ‘who Mona is’ ha!
What have you guys been up to here recently? Anything going on this Summer? Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
REID: Currently we are working on a new EP which is a lot of fun as we are recording in a slightly different way and more live as a band. We also have the more pressing detail of putting out to the World our Debut album ‘Time Well Spent’ which will also be the first release on our own little label Tejas Music. Albert is still very new so we are really keen on gathering more of a following and gigging for sure at the end of the Summer if not before, so for everyone reading this please follow us on the usual Suspects for all updates, your support will be very welcoming. Thanks so much for taking the time to interview us.
Big Love Albert
