"What’s Winsford famous for? Fucking nothing! Apart from salt and salt mines; we are all the salt of the earth up here.” Conrad Ellis, The Luka State
The Luka State are Conrad Ellis (voice, guitar), Sam Bell (bass, voice), Jake Barnabas (drums) and Lewis Pusey (guitars) and they hail from Winsford in Cheshire. The town is famous for salt mining but, just as interesting, is the fact that its half way between Liverpool and Manchester – hence, every kid in the town wanting to be a footballer or pop star the minute they can kick a ball or play a guitar. The Luka State chose music, although it was a close call for Jake who was a semi-professional footballer before Conrad and Sam saw him playing drums at a festival and said ”we are going to steal him” and, empirically, you’ll sense this by the energy and originality of the songs they perform live and on record: Bury Me - a two chord thrash of a song about meeting a girl in a bar and going back to her house to fuck - and Girl – about lusting after a girl you see walking down the street - have the intensity of early incarnations of The Jam (who are a huge influence) and The Clash….
