Gary James' Interview With Andy Curran Of
Coney Hatch



They are a Toronto based Hard Rock band that formed in 1981 and took their music to audiences all over the world. They played shows with Iron Maiden, Rough Cutt, Accept, Judas Priest, Krokos, Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick, Peter Frampton, Triumph, The Tubes and Edgar Winter. And now they've released an official live El Mocambo bootleg CD and vinyl collection of their music. We talked about all that and more with Coney Hatch bassist, Andy Curran.

Q - Andy, I followed the Hard Rock, Heavy Metal scene pretty closely in the 1980s and to be quite honest with you, I never once heard the name Coney Hatch mentioned. Did your record company not publicize the band the way the should have?

A - (laughs) Well, that's a good question Gary. Many years later you could ask that because there are lots of sort of die-hard, or what I would call underground Coney Hatch fans who are always asking that question. "How come you guys aren't bigger?" They just thought that maybe we were under-publicized. There were pockets of really strong support in England specifically, the U.K. where Kerrang! magazine and Sounds magazine really took a shining to the band. We had a few pockets in the U.S. like Upstate New York, obviously Buffalo (New York), and Detroit and Pittsburgh. They were good markets for Coney Hatch. But yeah, I guess it's one of those things where you look back and go, "What could we have done differently to have made our mark?"

Q - When you say Upstate New York, are you by chance referring to Syracuse? Did you ever perform in Syracuse, New York?

A - We did. We played there several times. I think for us, a lot of our exposure in the U.S. specifically, came in the wake of and in the midst of touring with Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. We were lucky enough to be Special Guests on the "Screaming For Vengeance" tour and "Piece Of Mind" tour. So we were definitely through Syracuse then. I vaguely remember Coney Hatch playing a Halloween show at maybe the Carrier Dome. It was a basketball place. So, we ended up doing a Halloween show there with a bunch of different bands. I loved that pocket because I would get really excited if we were going through Rochester because we would always visit the House Of Guitars, and that's one of my favorite spots.

Q - You guys were known for being a very loud band. How has your hearing held up over the years?

A - (laughs) Sorry, can you repeat that question again?

Q - I knew you were going to say that. I opened myself up for that one.

A - We gained that reputation for a couple of reviews that we received in Toronto where we had a number of different sound men, guys in front of the house, mixing sound for us. It was almost like they basically took a hockey stick and pushed all the meters up. We had reviews saying "The loudest band in Toronto." A lot of times we had altercations with club owners going, "Look if your sound man doesn't turn down for the next set, we're going to lose half our audience." I don't know if it was necessarily the band onstage, but there were definitely some volume hungry sound men who were responsible for mixing our band.

Q - When the band was starting, I take it there was quite a bit of work in Toronto?

A - Absolutely. The scene back then when we first started out was super, super robust. We honestly spent a lot of our formative years playing week long stints in certain venues. So, we would arrive on a Monday and play all the way through to Saturday night, playing three sets a night. That was all prior to signing our record deal, but I think it really helped us in honing our live chops. To answer your question, that Toronto scene alone, there was probably a dozen good Rock venues within the greater Toronto area that we could play on any give time.

Q - Before the pandemic, how much work was there for Coney Hatch? How often did you perform?

A - At this stage, we're obviously fast forward, close to forty years when you think about the Coney Hatch debut album in 1982. So, all four members are kind of scattered all over the place. It's quite an endeavor to get us all together. We've sort of become what I would term as weekend warriors. We play anywhere from six to twelve shows a year. A lot of them are in Europe ironically where there's been quite a lot of renewed interest. We've had a couple of shows rescheduled recently. We were going to be playing with Kim Mitchell in Buffalo and I think later on there was also talk of doing a show with Billy Sheehan's Tales. If we were going to do twelve shows a year, that's a heavy tour for Coney Hatch these days. (laughs)

Q - Coney Hatch opened for so many well known Rock groups, but what did that do for the band? Did it translate to record sales for the band?

A - If I look back I think it accomplished a few different things for us. Certainly first and foremost, when you're opening for some of these bigger acts like Judas Priest or Iron Maiden or Ted Nugent or Edgar Winter, the amazing thing you instantly do is up your game. You're basically playing with the big boys and you really have to make your mark and be on and win crowds over. So, I think it made us a better live band for sure. I definitely think it the case of Judas Priest or Iron Maiden, some of the bigger tours. Krokus and Accept, it increased our fan base and allowed us to come back to those cities and do gigs on our own. So maybe it didn't translate in terms of what I would say record sales, but visibility of the band hyped definitely for sure.

Q - I see the band was named after this Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in London.

A - (laughs)

Q - Who in the band heard about that asylum?

A - That would be yours truly. My parents and two sisters were born in England. In 1979, my parents took our whole family back to the area just north of London called Muswill Hill, where they grew up, met and dated and played a lot of tennis. So, when we were getting a tour of the actual town itself, we were walking along and there's this big, high brick wall and I said, "What's behind that brick wall?" And my mother said, "That's Colney Hatch, the Lunatic Asylum where when we were little kids we would be afraid some of the inmates were going to jump over the walls after us." I remember writing it down and thinking it was kind of cool. I had a little lyric book with me. I jotted it down. We took the L out 'cause we thought the L would confuse people and they would call the band Colney Hatch. We just kind of liked the idea of naming ourselves after a place that housed some pretty lunatic characters. We thought we could fit in pretty good there.

Q - I can see the correlation in adapting that name to Coney Hatch. Rock 'n' Roll can be pretty crazy at times, whatever crazy means these days.

A - Yeah.

Q - But it's a clever name.

A - And obviously the British press picked up on it. A lot of the interviews we did in the U.K., people were aware of it. Honestly, it was that early stage with my band where you're trying to pick a name and go, "Well, that sounds good. Let's go with it."

Q - You released a solo album. Was there not enough room on a Coney Hatch album for your songs?

A - The solo record came after Coney Hatch disbanded in 1985. Although it wasn't a bitter breakup, we just thought that was almost like a marriage that had gone bad but the parties were still going to be friends and we all parted ways. For me it was a reset and start all over again. So, I put a band together after I moved away from Coney Hatch. To be honest with you, by the time the third Coney Hatch record came out, being one of the founders, I felt that the sound had kind of really strayed from the original vision I had for the band. For me, that solo record might have been the first time that I really had full reign on the project. I'm quite proud of it when I look back on it. That record came out in 1992, so we've got another anniversary coming up. I ended up getting nominated for two Juno Awards here in Canada, which is the equivalent of the Grammys in the U.S. and ended up winning one of them. So, despite the fact that a lot of people know me as the bassist and one of the vocalists in Coney Hatch, I actually had far more success on my own as a solo artist.

Q - Now Coney Hatch is releasing this "El Mocambo" CD.

A - Yeah.

Q - How did you guys get your hands on that bootleg recording? Did you trace it down or did someone contact you?

A - That's a great question. Originally Coney Hatch played the El Mocambo in 1983. That club for Canada in Toronto is possibly one of the most iconic venues, small venues in Canada. I'm dating myself here, but I saw The Cars play their first ever show in Canada. I saw Rory Gallagher there. I saw Bon Jovi play there. But everybody from The Rolling Stones to Blondie to Cheap Trick to Stevie Ray Vaughan, they've all been at that venue. So it's a very iconic venue. Recently, in the last five years, a cool Toronto businessman and entrepreneur bought the venue and restored it. He's a very good friend of my younger brother, John. He reached out through John to see if Coney Hatch would be available to play that show, play the El Mocambo during kind of the middle of the pandemic. At that time you were allowed to have fifty people in the venue. So, we played to fifty people that night and we ended up recording and filming the show. It was a live stream on Nugs.net. So, the agreement that we made with Michael (Wekerle, owner of the El Mocambo) was that we would come in and do that show and we would give him Friends And Family rate, but we would have access to the audio and video afterwards so we could release this record. So, that was part and parcel of the contract we negotiated. We did that because we never released a live album and a lot of people have been complimenting us about the live sound of Coney Hatch. So that was sort of our way to kill two birds with one stone and be able to walk out of that show with a great recording that we were able to just re-mix and put out on vinyl and CD, currently available on the Coney Hatch website. So, it was definitely a small amount of records we press, three hundred. We thought it would be fun to put out a live record, and the reception has been very good so far.

Official Website: www.ConeyHatch.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

The views and opinions expressed by individuals interviewed for this web site are the sole responsibility of the individual making the comment and / or appearing in interviews and do not necessarily represent the opinions of anyone associated with the website ClassicBands.com.


Coney Hatch "Live At The Mocambo"