Crayon is a 5 piece Oxford-based band who met in Scarborough, North Yorkshire where Robin Moffatt, Michael Fothergill, William Orpen and Chris Carr were at uni. Andy Poole was added to the lineup recently on bass guitar. They play an eclectic mix of folk influenced rock, with all members contributing their own material and style of playing to the mix.

Early Days:

Robin and Mike already knew each other from the first year of university when they played indie covers in an unnamed band but had lost touch. Robin subsequently moved in with Chris and guitarist Nick Willshire and started a new band. Meanwhile Mike met Will after volunteering to play drums as an aside to his own project. The band – Odd Stray Chord – played heavy rock songs inspired by then singer Dane’s love of all things classic rock. Both bands incidentally shared a bass player before the third year of their university courses began to take up everyone’s time and efforts.

Odd Stray Chord was put on hold indefinitely, with Will and Mike working on an album together only in the studio as a recording project. Nick, Robin and Chris carried on playing when they could as semi-acoustic band “Crayon” in local venues. Nick would play bass with Chris on keyboards and Robin on guitar and vocals.

A chance meet towards the end of their final year put Mike and Robin back in touch and new project featuring Crayon, Mike and Will emerged. They found that since each of them played at least one other instrument, they were able to achieve a much more diverse sound than the average rock band.

Musically the band shared a love of old records as well as modern indie bands, and listened to anything from The Moody Blues to Radiohead in Nick, Robin and Chris’ flat which overlooked Scarborough’s South Bay.

Full lineup and Demo EP recording

Since finishing university they have been living separately scattered between the Midlands/South East area with Oxford in the middle, writing, recording and rehearsing ready to start playing shows.

In the summer of 2008, after a first rehearsal in a field in West Sussex, original bass player Nick found he was unable to commit the time to the band, and as he also had a long trip to the US planned, decided to leave. The 4 remaining members of Crayon carried on meeting whenever they could, rehearsing, writing, listening to music, eating fry ups at 2am and searching for a new bass player.

In autumn 2008, the band started recording a two track demo for an old friend of Mike’s with whom he had played with in the days before uni. Andy eventually joined the band as replacement bass player in 2009, and the new completed lineup doubled their efforts to get ready to perform. The fruits of these sessions incidentally can be heard on the Demo EP (Consolation and Fighting Chance were both recorded at this time). The other tracks were recorded one afternoon in an unused office space in High Wycombe, using a lot of studio bits and pieces borrowed from friends and family.

They have recently been playing at the Jericho Tavern in Oxford as well as in the South London area. Their varied live set features songs written by different members of the band, as well as multiple instrument swaps to create a more interesting sound.

They aim to play as many gigs as possible in 2010 so will hopefully see you soon!