THE Wharf has come up trumps again with the Faux Fighters, a tribute to Seattle borne Foo Fighters, which promises to be as close to the original — at a fraction of the cost — as a band can possibly get. Ellie Hudson spoke to bassist Rich Deighton to find out more ahead of their show on May 12…

Tell us about the Faux Fighters.

We are Jamie Deighton as Dave Grohl, Luke Winton as Taylor Hawkins on drums, Mark Philcox as Chris Shiftlet, lead guitarist and myself Rich Deighton as Nate Mendel on bass.

The band was originally put together early 2007 by Jamie and myself.

We tried several drummers and lead guitarists from advertising, finally in March 2008 we got introduced to a drummer called Luke Winton by mutual friends and from the first audition he blew us away.

We then found our first lead guitarist Lee Wright, having responded to an advert in a local music shop. Lee was based at RAF Lyneham at the time where his wife was in the forces so on November 21, 2008 the Faux Fighters played their first ever gig to a sell-out crowd in Swindon’s Riffs Bar.

The band began to play a lot more venues and travelled all over the country from Liverpool to south Wales to the south coast and anywhere in between. In December 2013 we decided to take a break from gigging and in 2016 reformed with a new lead guitarist Mark Philcox, who was playing in another band with Jamie and Rich.

The band is now bigger and better and back out gigging lots of new packed out venues.?

Who have you got in the band and what are their musical backgrounds?

Jamie Deighton is like his hero Dave Grohl. Jamie was originally a drummer and still plays drums in a Britpop/rock covers band with me (Rich) and Mark. Jamie has drummed in several original bands and also has a solo project he is working on in his own little studio. Forming a Foo Fighters tribute has been a dream of his for a long time having spent 12 months living in Seattle. Already a big Nirvana fan, he picked up a guitar and the rest is history.

Luke Winton is the youngest and an original member of the band. He has a passion for percussion and runs his own samba group as well as teaching drums/percussion both privately and working in schools. Luke has also played drums in a few reggae/dub bands including the Urban Lions. 

Mark Philcox has been with the band since 2016 and with Jamie and my covers band for five years now. He has a passion for Britpop music and has played with a few indie rock bands in the late 90s.

I’m Rich Deighton and Jamie’s older brother. The two of us have played in various original and cover bands together for 15 years. I played with two established local Swindon original bands from 1994-1998 playing venues all over London to A&R scouts and support slots with The Audience (Sophie Ellis Bexter) and Hurricane o1 in Gloucester.

How did the band come into being? Are you all mates with a mutual love of Foo Fighters or was it put together via auditions and so forth?

We are all good friends and two of us brothers. Like the more famous Gallagher brothers we do have our moments, but ten years on we’re doing something right .

How close to the original do you aspire to get?

Whilst there are other Foo Fighters tributes on the circuit, we pride ourselves on being as close as you will get to a Foo Fighters show with a few live extras to involve the audience.

Jamie is by far the best look and soundalike Dave Grohl and has occasionally been mistaken for the man himself.

The band tries to use guitars and amps similar to the Foos to replicate the high energy sound ?

The set list must be quite extensive now, how do you decide what to play? Is it a case of go for the big hitters straight away or do you balance it out with hits and lesser known album tracks?

The set has evolved a lot over the last ten years. The Foos hits will always be in the set and some album tracks for the hardcore fans.

We have recently added three new songs to the sets from the new album Concrete and Gold. We try to mix them up but we keep the obvious tracks till the later stages— save the best for last!?