An Interview with Citrus’ Ben Lacey and Charlie Killen
5-piece Indie Rock band Citrus formed after meeting on their Popular Music course at Coventry University.
I sat down with Ben Lacey, the lead vocalist of Citrus, and the band’s keyboardist, Charlie Killen, to find out about how the band started, and what inspires them.
Citrus’ Lead Vocalist, Ben Lacey (right), and Keyboardist, Charlie Killen (left).
Hello Ben and Charlie. Great to meet you! Where are you both from?
Ben: I’m from Derby.
Charlie: I’m from Exeter.
How did your band Citrus form?
Charlie: Before we came to Coventry University, we were all involved in different group chats. I met Ben through a random group chat, so he was the only person that I knew on my course. Ben wasn’t in a great flat at the time, so I was like “Oh come over to ours. We’ll have pre-drinks and then go out”, and he basically never left.
Ben: I practically lived in Charlie’s flat for a while.
Charlie: So, me and Ben became really good mates. Then through the course, the way the course was set up, we create bands. There were two other guys, Harvey and John, with a very similar music taste to us. They knew us and we knew them, but we had never got round to forming a band together. We then got an opportunity to form our own bands, and they put their names down to be in the same band as us.
It was just the four of us. We got into a room and did one song, and then we were assigned a drummer, James, who is our drummer now. We did the first rehearsal and then went to the pub, and we all said, “actually let’s make this a band”, and that’s how this all started.
How long has Citrus been together for now?
Ben: We started around late September, beginning of October time.
Charlie: Yeah, so it’s been like five or six months.
Ben: We tend to practice every week, and we see each other in lectures just about other day.
Charlie: We have had a lot of opportunities to play together in the past. I think what it boils down to is that we are all mates, so we have all learned how each other work.
I get the feeling you have been singing and playing piano for a while. How did you both start?
Ben: I had guitar lessons in Year 7, so I was 11 years old. I did them for about three weeks and then realised I was doing more in my own time at home than with the teacher, so I stopped doing them.
I never really did sing properly, until I started doing music for GCSE. Then I started doing musical theatre and started singing in bands as well. It just sort of developed from there.
Charlie: I’m going to sound like such a nerd. *Ben giggles*
I had my first piano lesson at 4 years old, but I quit before I turned 5. *Charlie laughs*
From a young age, I didn’t really like getting told what to do and I think that’s why popular music courses work for people like me and Ben. Classical lessons felt a bit tedious, because you want to do what you want to do, which is kind of what popular music is to me. I did take some singing lessons. I became a bit of a classical singer. I then picked piano back up when I was around 12 or 13, and I basically taught myself chord theory and started learning how to write. There was a lot of practicing, and I did end up taking some more lessons, but they were more based around chord theory. It was more stuff that uses tools rather than necessarily scales which really worked for me. I came to university as a singer and guitarist and now I’m a pianist!
Who inspires you musically?
Charlie: *Jokingly to Ben* Matty Healy. Alex Turner.
Ben: I love the lyrics to The 1975 and Arctic Monkeys… *Both burst into laughter*
Charlie: Every indie singer at the minute is inspired by Alex Turner and Matty Healy so you’re justified!
Ben: *Laughs* Fair. But they are good.
Charlie: They are good, that’s why it works. Myself, I’ve got a very varied background. I like playing piano, and I’ve been moving into keys and synth recently, but I’ve always loved Jacob Collier. His use of harmony is mental. I love chords. For Citrus musically, I think it’s a lot of 70s, 80s and 90s rock to be honest.
Ben: Yeah, bands like Pink Floyd.
Charlie: Our guitarist loves Led Zeppelin and stuff like that. I think we’ve got a lot of avenues to explore, and we might make a lot of different sounds. We just have got to find which one works for us.
Where did the inspiration come from for your new track ‘Jesuwi’?
Ben: So, the lyrics I started writing during lockdown. There’s a load of fields just behind my house, so I used to go on walks around there nearly every day because that was all you could do. I wrote Jesuwi, and another song that we haven’t recorded yet called Back To The Fields whilst walking there.
I was never able to put it to music or anything. I got to university, started the band and Charlie and Harvey were messing around with chords…
Charlie: So I’m not a guitarist. I claimed to be a guitarist before university, I got here and realised I was awful, so I don’t claim to be a guitarist anymore. I’m okay with it so I can use it almost as a song writing tool. I went over to Harvey and said, “Just play these two chords”. They are the two chords that you can hear in the introduction and the verse.
He basically took them and made them sound cool and really good. *Laughs* Then I went to John who plays Bass for us, and I asked him to try the two notes on Bass. They started doing that and we made the song in what was our first ever band rehearsal. We just got together and were like ‘this sounds sick’.
Ben: We recorded it around late November time. There wasn’t long between us writing and recording it.
Have you created any other tracks besides ‘Jesuwi’?
Ben: This is our only song we have on Spotify. We have some others that we plan on recording in the next few weeks.
Charlie: We have a full weekend of studio sessions booked. After that weekend we hope to have our EP recorded, and then it will be mixed and mastered so we should be able to release it halfway through this year. I’m hoping for around summertime.
You can check out Citrus and their track ‘Jesuwi’ on Spotify, and keep up with the band on Instragram.