This June, Liam Fender and his superstar brother Sam fulfilled a long-standing family ambition in a most unexpected way. “The Fender family is all Newcastle United mad, and all really good footballers: my dad, my uncles, my granddad was semi-professional,” explains Liam, speaking over video call from the spare bedroom at home in North Shields. “I came along and I’m fucking useless. I was that shit at football, I got bullied by a PE teacher! It soured the whole thing for us, and Sam’s by no means a footballer. So there was something quite heartening and amusing about the fact that the two shittest footballers in the family are the ones who can say we’ve played at St James’ Park!”
During those two sold-out nights at Newcastle’s Cathedral on the Hill, Liam joined Sam (who’s 9 years his junior) to duet on Bruce Springsteen’s slow-burning 1984 classic ‘I’m On Fire’. Now, Liam is preparing to release debut EP ‘Love Will…’, a rich collection of ballads and bawlers that showcases his knack for melody and sharp turn of phrase, as if Richard Hawley were from a bit further North.
Here, he tells NME about digging into the songwriting vaults he’s built up after 20 years of gigging, starting work on his first album and lending his support to a campaign to help men’s mental health in the North East during the cost of living crisis.
The Collected Works of Kevin EG Perry 