There is a particular kind of magic in music that sounds familiar as well as entirely its own. Winchester 7 & The Runners understands that balance instinctively, drawing on the energy of garage rock, the melodic instincts of classic songwriting and the sun soaked spirit of surf music, while placing the unlikely sound of an electric tenor ukulele right at the centre of it all.

This is a project that is playful without being lightweight, carefully crafted without losing its sense of spontaneity and firmly rooted in the belief that a great song should still be able to cut through the noise.

We caught up with Winchester 7 for this exclusive interview to talk about the creative thinking behind the project, the making of No Worse For Wear, the stories and ideas woven through its songs and how an electric tenor ukulele became such an integral part of the band’s distinctive sound.

We also delve into the visual world surrounding the music, the inspiration behind “The World From My Bed”, and what lies ahead for Winchester 7 & The Runners.

1. Tell us the story of this track. Why did you choose to visualize it specifically in this way?

The song started innocently enough.  My family was talking about how much of current events my teen daughter learns about on Tiktok and its often dubious accuracy.  I thought how much of a change that represents to our communications and how, generally, weak people’s innate critical reasoning can be.  So, I started writing from a perspective of a “it was this, now it’s that” sort of thing.  

But, that sort of song starts to sound like cranky old man shouting at clouds pretty quickly whereas I was more interested in the contrast than suggesting that one was better than another.  I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but older news media has made its share mistakes of too – like how Dungeons & Dragons is deadly or that time when Martians invaded.

Anyway, with all of that in mind, I latched onto the idea that rotting in bed is also, these days, not the same isolated thing it once was.  And there I had the title with a bridge written from an imagined perspective of my daughter’s.

So, we set out to shoot a video that borrowed some of those themes in a time travelly sort of way.

2. What was the inspiration behind this new video (visuals, storyline, etc.)?

Something you may not have picked up on is that the trunk on the album cover for our EP No Worse For Wear which is also shown in the video – as an aside, that’s the actual trunk that my great grandfather brought over with him from Northern Italy when he immigrated to the US – was previously seen in a video for our song “The Golden Age”. One in the back catalogue.  

Anyway, in that one, Jack opened the trunk and got out a device that he used to time travel back to the ’50s to visit my grandparents on a vacation of theirs to what appears to be Atlantic City, in an effort to escape COVID lockdown.  Hey, it was a nice thought! 

In reality, we were all stuck together for the bulk of it as travel restrictions happened right after we all got together to record.
So, at the end of “Waitin’ Here For You”, Jack finds his time machine again, after rummaging his way through the thing, and we all get a bit of a surprise.  The video for “The World From My Bed” picks up from there with me (Win) shown stuck on a bed in some sort of time pocket with some surreal stuff happening just outside the window that I mostly ignore.  

3. What was the process of making the video?

I wanted to create a video that built upon the prior video release for our song, “Waitin’ Here For You”.  We shot the album cover while filming that video in the same session.  We sat on the couch for some stills and then started to do our thing as the song played in a continuous shot. 

“The World From My Bed” was shot right after that to keep some continuity.  

The World is literally seen from my bed outside that time window, as I rot away with my uke, phone, and a good book.  We then added some footage of feature vocalist Airinna Namara, who sings the bridge, in said window and got our video!  

Keep up with Winchester 7 & The Runners on the Website