Hail The Caezars as cult rockabilly punks to make their comeback at The Barn in Portsmouth

While the Portsmouth-based rockabilly-punks had gained cult success, guitarist Danny “O” explains that it wasn’t enough to sustain the band members without them needing day jobs.

"We were touring in Germany and the van broke down,” Danny recalls. “I was on the side of the road wondering what on earth was going on, knowing that I had this law course coming up,” he has since become a practicing lawyer, specialising in music law, “and thinking maybe it's not the end of the world that I'm going to be doing this (touring) on a less regular basis.

"You get to that point where world domination is off the table and you have to reassess what you want to do and how you're going to treat it.

"At that point we decided let's do a final run of shows and go out on a high in a way that we're all happy with, rather than letting it fizzle out.”

They played their final show at Nambucca in London and as Danny says: “We all left on very good terms, and were all still mates – we'd met up in the intervening years.”

Danny kept his hand in with the band Thee DB3 and fronting his own project, The Astrotones. The latter band released their well-received debut album in 2019.

“We did the headline tour at the end of 2019 which went really well,” says Danny, “and we we starting to build up momentum, but then the pandemic hit and we had two years of forced hiatus.”

They also lost a member for medical reasons, which further compounded their problems.

"We carried on as a three-piece for a little bit, but the songs I'd written didn't really work for just a three-piece lineup.

“We decided it's quite a lot of effort to dredge it all back up when we're down a member and we can't really play the songs in the way we want to, so we were going to honour the commitments we had and then it sort of fizzled out."

The Caezars’ bassist Steve Neller was also part of the Astrotones lineup, and it was at the Rockabilly Rave festival last year in Camber Sands that they bumped into Caezars’ vocalist AJ.

“I think we realised how much we missed hanging out on a regular basis. A good way to make sure that we did hang out on a regular basis was to put the band back together.

“I think AJ had had enough of a break by then, and for me the idea of not having a gig to look forward to was really alien. Since I was 17, I've always had a gig coming up. So when it was quite clear that the Astrotones weren't going to carry on, I was glad that AJ had had enough time off to want to do The Caezars again.

"We all agreed it would be on a less intense level, but you can only take it as it comes. If loads of people are trying to book us – which they have been – then you have to take each one on its own merits and maybe start being a bit more selective in the shows we're playing.

"It’s just great to have all four of us back with the original lineup.”

And for their first show back, at The Barn in Milton on Saturday, they’re launching their third album.

Self-titled, it is very much a statement of intent from the revived group.

As Danny says, it captures the band in the raw: "Every other album we've done has been under the guidance of someone else. We've always been helped by someone who's provided the studio or somebody else has been producing or engineering it.

“We've never put an album out on vinyl, so we really wanted to do an LP, and we wanted to do it like they did in the late ’50s/early ’60s. We want to do it all live, straight to tape, and have an album that comes out with no digital interference – it's all analogue.

"We recorded that at the same place we recorded the Astrotones album, Gizzard Studios in East London – which is now a five minute walk from where I live.

“I think that's at the heart of what we do – we're taking a modern approach with old equipment and old inspiration. That kind of runs through the heart of everything we do, which is why I think we end up sounding sort of Cramps-y with a punky edge to it – we're listening to old stuff, with the benefit of another 60 years of musical influence.

“We know what we like, but we're playing it in 2024, so it ends up sounding a bit louder, and a bit more full-on, but it's got the same attitude and rebel ethos that Elvis had in 1954."

For remaining tickets go to book.events/pompeypunknroll.