Rhys Kirkby-Cox tells David Hennessy what inspires Everyone You Know’s music, about being in a band with his brother and about his Irish family..
“We just say it’s music for the people,” Rhys Kirkby-Cox describes Everyone You Know’s sounds to The Irish World. “It’s not based around money or what you have or what you don’t have. It’s based around how we’re living. It’s about friends and family and everyday situations. That’s what we’re trying to do, trying to make relatable music for everyday people. Everyone You Know. The inspiration behind all the music is everyday life and situations.”
Rhys is joined in Everyone You Know by his brother Harvey Kirkby. Inspired by everyone from The Streets to Arctic Monkeys, the boys have an electric sound that is combined with lyrics that strike a chord with the post millennial generation of Tinder and social media. Although they have always been musical, making music together has been a relatively new development for the siblings.
“It was a gradual process because we were both making music individually for a good few years. My brother was making beats and making tunes and I was producing my own beats and writing songs and stuff and then we decided, ‘Why are we doing this separately? Let’s come together’. We decided to come together and spent a good while crafting our sound and creating our sound. Then we sort of came up with that first EP Cheer up Charlie at the back end of last year.”
What made them want to call themselves Everyone You Know? “We were going through a few ideas and we came up with Everyone You Know. It sort of just stuck then. With the tunes we were making, it just felt like it made perfect sense. It’s who we are aswell, we’re just like everyone you know. There’s nothing too special or different about us. We’re normal, average men. We thought the name was really fitting and everyone has really taken to the name so it’s cool it stuck.”
The brothers have just released their sophomore EP Look After Your Pennies, featuring the visceral and atmospheric single, The Drive. The Drive tells the story of a group of young lads who are cruising around looking for excitement only for things to take a dark turn. The track sounds like it should feature on the soundtrack of a gangster movie. Like all their music, this track comes from experience: “You go looking for something to do and you end up getting yourself in trouble. We’re big fans of hip-hop so we decided to literally recreate that storytelling. Hopefully, you feel like you’re in that car. You stop listening to it, you take your headphones out and you go, ‘Wow, I felt like I was in that car with them’.”
Rhys spent much time in Ireland growing up with his Irish mother who is not the mother of his bandmate: “Growing up, I spent a load of time over there.
“My Grandad, Louis Cox lives in Rathmines and he used to own a few shops down at Camden Street so he’s like a proper legend down there. You can’t walk down Camden Street without someone stopping you knowing who he is. The rest of my family live in Templeogue.”
Louis got to perform in Ireland recently when Everyone You Know went to Dublin as part of their debut headline tour of the UK and Ireland: “It was incredible. It was the first time my Irish family got to see me perform. It was my first time performing over there so it was a really special moment for us actually. I loved every moment of it.”
The Sandhurst brothers are unlikely to be making any headline with a Gallagher-esque feud but Rhys relives a very Liam Gallagher like episode happened to him in Stoke: “We were playing at a tiny little venue and they crammed a load of people in to see us and this stag do walked in. They were alright, they were having a good laugh. Then this one geezer- it was ground level, there was no stage- he sort of came up and tried to get on the mic. Then he tried to square up to me giving me a bit of aggro but it was all good, it got resolved.
“There was no security or anything. I humoured him for a bit and then a few of his pals pulled him back. It was a good laugh. It’s funny when things like that happen. It could have been (a lot worse). I was literally in the middle of singing with this geezer right in my face giving me grief. It was alright, you’ve got to laugh these things off.”
Everyone You Know’s Look After Your Pennies EP is out now.
