JASON Williamson has music in is genes.
His father Brian Bradley, and Uncle Tony were for many years part of one of Grantham’s most popular bands, The Kobalts.
Grantham born and bred, he went to first to Belton Lane Primary School, then to St Wulfram’ s and finally Grantham College to study music and Drama.
He had various jobs, from the kitchen of Little Chef at Colsterworth, to a benefits officer at Nottingham, where he now lives with his wife and daughter.
He worked for a spell at Grantham’s Moy Park factory but was sacked after being spotted smoking in the car park.
He auditioned all over the country for drama but eventually music became his forte had various bands but has now he has found success as half of the hip-hop duo, Sleaford Mods.
Williamson’s progress through his 20s and 30s was not easy. He spent nine abortive months trying to find musical soulmates in San Francisco, came home and played guitar and sang in a succession of bands, and ended up trying to ride the wave of late-period Britpop in a group who were almost called Sunday Dinner, before settling on Meat Pie. Their aim was to somehow combine Small Faces and Guns N’ Roses, but cocaine did for them.
Sleaford Mods started out sometime during 2006 while Jason was living in Nottingham. Born out of part frustration and part accident, it quickly found its feet as an aggressive verbal onslaught on all that is contrived and connected to the day-to-day hammer of low paid employment and domestic siutations arising from that trap.
After a year of working ideas out in both the studio and in live performances, Williamson moved south and took the cause to London for a couple of years and trod the boards there for a couple of years, before returning to Nottingham in 2009.
Soon after that return he met Andrew Fearn and the Sleaford Mods became a duo.
Andrew’s involvement meant that Jason was now able to stop creating the samples and loops that littered the early recordings and concentrate on the lyrics, while Andrew created numerous tunes for Jason to vent his spleen over.
After being invited to play at a three day festival curated by Nottingham’s Rammel Club, a working relationship with Nottingham’s abstract-punk Harbinger Sound label was formed. A year later, This relationship resulted in the release of the “Austerity Dogs” vinyl album. The album featured, and topped, many writers’ polls for the best records of 2013.
This release was followed by numerous shows around the UK and Europe, including further festival appearances.
In the early 1980s, his parents Brian and Yvonne used to take him the Picturedrome cinema in Sleaford (Grantham had no cinema in those days).
Jason said: “I don’t know why I put it in the name, it sounded better than ‘Grantham Mods’, which doesn’t really roll,”
Sleaford Mods appeared at the 2015 Glastonbury Festival and have been featured on Later with Jools Holland.
There is also the release of Invisible Britain, A film shot on Sleaford Mods’ 2015 UK tour about the band, the fans and the state of modern Britain.
You can see it at….
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sleaford-mods-invisible-britain-documentary#/
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