As the latest sports bar to arrive in Dubai, Lock, Stock & Barrel calls itself “the bar that brings you everything.” Three days out of the week, ‘everything’ includes 13 Daze — the resident rock band who’ll provide you a mix of gritty rock songs, and the occasional kitschy country cover.
“We do some heavy stuff — Rage Against the Machine, Metallica, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, [Red Hot] Chili Peppers — but we also like to include a lot of things that people wouldn’t expect,” said guitarist and lead vocalist Gaz Hanford. “We’ll do, like, Dolly Parton or Nancy Sinatra. We like to mix it up and keep it different, and always give it a different twist on what we’re doing.”
On Mondays, the boys play a chilled-out acoustic set. On Wednesdays, they add a little bass to it. On Fridays, they go full-out rock stars with muscley amps and full drums.
Seven years ago, the original line-up of the band were all kitesurf instructors in a small town in Egypt called Hurghada. One day, the guys who owned Lock, Stock and Barrel came up to them and said, “Hey, we saw you playing guitar on the beach, what do you think about making a band?’
Today, it’s just Hanford and bassist Bengan Hovgard who remain. They chose the name ‘13 Daze’ as an ode to the first kitesurfing movie made.
At Lock, Stock & Barrel, they play “primarily covers, but we try to sneak some of our originals in there and hope people don’t notice.”
Spanning different cultures and age groups, Hanford, 33, comes from England, while Hovgard, 45, comes from Sweden. They’re completed by drummer Fawzy Ferghani, 27, from Egypt and lead guitarist Tristan Surina, 25, from France. (When the band first started out, Surina’s dad was the lead guitarist, and Surina was just a teenager watching them from the crowd.)
“I think the reason that it works the way it is now — first of all, we’re all incredibly stupid,” laughed Hanford. “We like to mess around. We like to have fun.”
On the other hand… “We all just want to do a kick [expletive] show. We are our worst critics — we can do an amazing show and still we come off stage and go, ‘Oh, that was not right or that was not right.’ All of us are pretty dedicated like that.”
The foursome are 60 per cent through their first album at the moment, though Hanford is in no rush to put it out there. He wants to make sure it’s chock full of good tunes first.
“When we were writing the album, we decided we want to write songs that we would love to hear,” he explained.
“It’s a bit like a dirty Foo Fighters, maybe. We want strong vocals and choruses, but with cool guitar riffs. It’s definitely going to be quite heavy — but not dark or metal or anything like that. Just some heavy rock music.”
*Check out 13 Daze at Lock, Stock & Barrel at the Grand Millennium Hotel, starting at 10.30pm. Call 04-5149195.