Charlie Simpson tours with the guitarist from his first ever band.
The ‘Cemetery’ hitmaker released his debut solo album, ‘Young Pilgrim’, last year, and made sure he recruited some of the people he is closest to for his backing band on his current UK tour.
He exclusively told BANG Showbiz: ”We all have a good laugh on the road. My band actually features a guy a went to school with. And I went to school with my guitar tech as well, so its all a bit incestuous, but we’re all really close as well.”
The 26-year-old guitarist and vocalist has been writing music since he was seven, and formed a band at a very young age.
He said: ”Our first band was called Spleen. It was kind of like rock, a bit Silverchair-y, melodic rock, I guess. It’s funny I found a tape we made the other day as I was cleaning out my house, the first CD we ever recorded. And it sounds like dog s**t, but it was awesome to hear, it brought back a lot of memories.”
However Simpson admits that it was technologically difficult to begin his career when at school, and is jealous of the equipment available to younger people today to make demos on.
He added: ”If I’d had the technology at my disposal that 14-year-old kids have now, we would have made such awesome college demos. I’m so jealous that when I was 12 all you had was like a Tascam four track tape player.”
Charlie’s ‘Farmer & His Gun’ EP is out today (26.03.12) and he is currently touring the UK.

Charlie Simpson UK Spring tour 2012, remaining dates:
March 27 Academy, Sheffield
March 28 University, Newcastle
March 30 Liquid Rooms,Newcastle
March 31 Fat Sams, Dundee
April 02 Pyramids Centre, Portsmouth
April 03 Solus, Cardiff
April 05 Princess Pavillion, Falmouth
April 06 The Phoenix, Exeter