This is an extract from an interview in a recent edition of Siren:

It was time for something funky, something fresh and something fruity at Siren I thought, but what? I didn't have to look for long however, as on one cold autumn night at the Flapper I discovered the talents of Joy. "It was nice to get the chance to play the Flapper, because it's such an indie place and it was just nice to put on a night that was something different" explains drummer and flute player Tom, as we chatted over a pint in Moseley.

The rest of Joy consists of Sanjay on vocals, bassist Richard, Steve on keyboards, Joe on trumpet and newest member percussionist Mark. They met up while at University and one day "we were in a record shop and started looking through the jazz funk section and he (Sanjay) just said 'I'm a singer and I wanna be in a jazz funk band' and I said 'I'm a drummer - lets f***ing go.' We put adverts up everywhere and got a really good response. We've just become really good mates, it just gels. I wouldn't want to start another band, the electricity there for me is amazing" smiles Tom.

And the rest as they say us history. Well not quite, they still have a long way to go and doing the jazz funk thing in Birmingham is not that common. "We started off lazy and wrote shitload of songs, not just jams but songs and wrote far too much material and we were really choosy about gigs, cause Birmingham's a weird one, you've got the big venues, then the indie venues and then that was it really, by we managed to notch our way into the Medicine Bar and they loved us and we got a residancy there," explains Tom," maybe we've spent too long on the material, but then again we can play for an hour and a half and all of it will be original. All of our tunes have got the same amount of us in them."

Siren is an independent music magazine based in Birmingham.