“BELIEVE IN YOURSELF,
HAVE FUN,
DON’T BE A DICK”
- Geordio
Interview
Have you ever sat there and thought “do you know what I’m in the mood for? Some Geordie rap tunes, accompanied with heavy riffs and full of wrestling, football and Final Fantasy references”. We’ve all been there, right? Well, look no further than North East’s own Geordio. Delivering his fair share of relatable lyricism and crunchy guitars all while donned in the mask of Luchador legend Penta, we wanted to know who, truly, is Geordio…
How did you come up with the concept of Geordio, the music, the appearance, just everything?
I've been making music for nearly 25 years and I've been in different bands. When my son was born about 7 years ago (I say about because he's 7 next week) I just thought “I just need to do it. It's either now or never” and it's ironic because when I wanted to make music, I've always tried to make music that I thought other people would like and it just showed because I could never finish the track. It got to the point where I was like “I don't like that” but then when my son was born, I thought, “right, now or never, I need to do this.”
My other band wasn't gigging as much and I was in a cover band and I liked it, but I wasn’t able to fully be me. I just wanted to go for it, and then I just thought, “well, I can't really just go out as a weird ginger guy talking loads of weird stuff”. At the time, Penta wasn't really very well known (the guy whose mask I wear), he was quite big on the indie scene, but I saw his mask and I just thought that would be perfect. I don't know where I came up with the word “Geordio”. It had nothing to do with Julio Geordio from the Harry Enfield show back in the day. It was after that that I linked that up. Then when I wrote the first track, the Geordio Audio, I thought, “oh, shit.” It had nothing to do with either of them, but I can't remember how I came up with the actual word. I thought, “well, Geordie Luchador, that'll do”. So, yeah, it just went from there really.
Do you feel that having that level of anonymity allows you to create the type of music that you wouldn’t usually if you weren’t in character?
No, I think the lyrics and the content in it is stuff that I've been doing for a while, but weirdly the other band that I've been in for like 20 years, I put on a bit of a posh accent, and it's a similar character, but it's different. I don't know why I just don't be myself, because I'm probably boring or something I diven’t kna.
I was talking to somebody at the festival I was playing at the weekend and he was just talking about rapping in Geordie. It increases the amount of rhyming you can do just by switching the accent and switching how words are spoken. When I first did it I didn't really go full on Geordie accent, but then at some point I decided, “nah, I'm going to go for it”, and with the Geordie accent, it's like “dee”, the word “dee” completely changes, like you're going to “do” something, but if it doesn’t fit you can change it to “dee” then you’ve got “dee, me, see” and if it doesn’t fit and you just want to go back to the normal word you can just put “do” in so it just doubles what you can dee.
What was the first moment you realised rap over rock was your sound?
That’s how my other band is. We started in 2006 and when we first started there was a rapper from Sierra Leone who was the front man and I was the scratch DJ but he moved to London and he just said to me “look, just take over, just go mad, you’ll be able to do it no problem”. I was very sceptical but it worked out and that was everything from metal to funk, psychedelic. So it’s always something that I’ve done but when it came to actually doing the Geordio stuff it was music that I like and I just put Geordie rapping over the top of it.
When I was growing up it was Limp Bizkit and Rage against the Machine, and it’s something that I’ve always loved because I’ve always wanted to be a singer but I can’t fucking sing for the life of me, and I’ve always been a performer so it just seemed like the natural fit especially with what I’ve been doing with the other band. I just love funky bass lines, chunky guitars and fast, energetic music, and that’s what I’ve tried to make. It’s weird because like I say I’ve always tried to make music for other people and it didn’t work, then I just made music for myself and loads of people like it, so it’s worked out quite nicely.
Your Geordio Audio EP was released 7th March 2025 – looking back a year on, what do you love about that first release now and is there anything you’d change?
What I love about it is that I fucking did it. You know what I mean? I've been wanting to create and release music for 20 odd years, and it was just like, right, brilliant there it is, I've done it. I've released some music. I mean, I did it with my band but it's what I've wanted to do for a long, long time. It's still not ticked over a 1000 plays, which, like, I'm not even that bothered about. When I played the festival on Saturday night, I played Geordie Audio, and as soon as the bass line hit, 20, 30 people in the crowd started cheering because they knew what it was and I was blown away by that. So yeah, I was absolutely loving that, but the only thing that I would change - it's why the album's taken so long, because I've got my album written, I've got most of it recorded, but I've gone back and I've recorded all of the vocal again because since I released that over a year ago, I've found my voice just through gigging. I released that 6 months before I performed on stage and when I'm performing on stage, the Geordie accent is a lot thicker and with everything that I've released, the Geordie accent's there, but it's not as thick as I do when I'm on stage now. So one of the things that does change from the album with that is the vocal is a lot more Geordie. But past that, it's pretty much exactly the same tune.
It’s just about having fun, like with my other band as well, it was just about having fun and we got quite popular in the area just because if you came to see us, you’d have a good time and that’s the same sort of thing I’m trying to do with Geordio, is that “come on, who’s this weird fella wearing a mask talking shit in Geordie” but you have a good time doing it. Line them up that [track] was one that I wrote years ago. I worked at The Cluny studio when I was 21/22, and one of the things that they did is that you could sing along to your own backing tacks and they’d record it professionally and you’d get it to take away, and some guy came in and started singing some Bollywood and Bhangra and he played that track and I was listening to it and I thought “Aw, I could sample this”. This was about 20 years ago that I actually got the sample and I’ve building it and building it ever since, and it was only about a year and half ago that I put some slap bass on it and it came to fruition. I think that’s one of the other things I’m really happy about is that a lot of the tracks that I play, I’ve been making for about 20 years. Geordie Audio, that’s saved on my computer a “last of ‘23”, so I think I did that at the end of 2023, but some songs like Girl in the Dene (that’s going to be on the album), Line Them Up and a few others, I wrote them about 20 years ago. I think it’s just good that I’m finally being able to get them out.
Which track that you’ve released best captures what Geordio is?
I think Geordio Audio is quite a good one, but there's one that I played for the first time the other day, which I think that probably encapsulates it, but that one's going to be on the album. One that I've released would be You Just Be You, I think. just because that is Geordio. just like, “here, just have fun, and if people don't like that you're having fun, fuck them! Don't listen to them” That probably encapsulated because musically as well it's got a bit of everything. It’s got 100 mile an hour. It's got chunky guitars. It just dips down to some nice, sort of chilled out sections as well, and it goes from reverby, nice guitar chords into full on heavy distorted chugs and flips between the two whilst I talk about Final Fantasy. So, yeah, I think that probably You Just Be You pretty much encapsulates most of what Geordio is.
You’ve just performed at The Rift festival – how was that experience?
It's the first time that I did a festival. Actually, when I did my first ever gig in August last year, they came with a band called Perfect Chicken, Mozzenjammer, they did loads of filming and they just spoke to me afterwards and said, “look, we really like you, do you want to come down and do some gigs down in Middlesbrough?” And they've been awesome. They've been really, really good, really good people. When they first started organising it. Hayley, the organiser who's worked really hard in it, just got in touch and said, “Look, do you want to play at this festival?”...Fuck yeah. So, it was good because it was the longest set that I've played. It's like with the album, it's just under 50 minutes and it was a 40 minute set. So that's all the music that I've got. So the ones that I haven't played live and the ones that I haven't actually finished yet. One of them's like 7 minutes long, so I don't really want to play that one live. So I've essentially got like a 40-45 minute set. This is the longest that I've been able to do, and it went really well, and yeah, it was really, really well received as well.
“What I love about it is that I fucking did it”
When you’re writing bars, are you chasing humour, aggression, storytelling, or something else?
Yeah, it's one of those things is that if you try, then you'll not get anywhere, whereas if you just go with it, then it'll fly off the pen or the pencil. There's few of them I did write a long time ago, but, when I first started doing it, there was 4 or 5 tunes like Geordie Audio and, Entitled…People and You Just Be You, and I Love The Toon. Those 4 were the first 4 that I really got stuck into. I used to take my son to a dance class at Newcastle College on a Saturday mornings, and I used to go in there and he used to go up and do the class and I'd have about 45 minutes, just sat in that big massive bit at the bottom of the performance academy and I just used to write and write and write and after about a month, I had them pretty much done, but it is a bit of a weird process because ironically, track 13 on the album. I just couldn't find anything for it. Because usually I get one idea, one line and I build it around it. But with this one, I just couldn't get anything. I thought about doing one about online dating, about a relationship that didn't work out. I thought about doing it about my son, I just couldn't get anything down. Then I text my friend and I said, I'm trying to figure out something for this, and this is after like a year and a bit of trying to find something, and she said, it sounded like Vampire Weekend I guess she said something about getting sunburnt or something afterwards, and I thought, “I'm going to do a song about vampires going on holiday!” It clicked and then as soon as I got that, I'd finished the track within 3 hours and it's just strange how it works. It depends upon what I'm going for, even if it's a bit dark, like Entitled…People where it's having to go at people for not being very nice, I still put a bit of humour in there. One of the guys this weekend said that if I took it too seriously, it wouldn't work and I can see exactly where he's coming from with that. If I went up and was just really serious about it with no humour, it probably wouldn't work, but since the humour is there, it's more approachable and people can relate a lot to what I'm saying.
I did a gig a couple of weeks ago and it was Ultra Jam, and it was Tommy who invited me, a really, really nice guy. His and Max Gavins’ set were excellent! I stood there and I was listening to some of them, and I was just like, “dude, you're taking yourself far too seriously”, they were saying “I'm the best this. I'm the best that”, and then they wouldn't be able to finish a verse because they'd mess up, and it's just like, look, just take yourself less seriously, and you'll find that things are a lot easier, because I've never taken myself seriously ever and it's worked to my benefit so often. It makes things so much easier. It makes meeting people easier. It makes getting involved with things easier. It just makes everything easier and that was one of the problems that I think that a lot of hip hop has up here in the North East to try to take themselves too seriously and I’m thinking, look, you're a fucking Geordie. You know what I mean? You're not from Compton. So don't try to be.
What’s the most important message in your music?
Believe in yourself, have fun, don’t be a dick. I'm a teacher and one of the things that I used to say to my tutor group - I work with sixth form kids now, so I don't get the chance to say it as often. I put it in one of the tracks - but the motto for the class that I just randomly came up with one day was, be nice, be kind, behave. That's essentially what the message is, because pretty much all of the tracks are like, just don't be a dick, be nice, have a good time, but don't take it too far.
Your music is very “from Newcastle”
“Like Anthony Kiedis with California”
Exactly! What does being from Newcastle mean to you beyond accent and references?
If you're anywhere else in the country or anywhere else in the world and anybody hears your accent they think “Oh, you're a Geordie!” I put it in one of the tunes, we've got a reputation of being welcoming and friendly and as soon as people hear that, then it makes me feel really proud for being a Geordie. I mean, I couldn't choose it, I just fell into it, but at the same time, it just makes me proud, and that's another reason why when I perform, I perform being friendly, being kind because I'm trying to personify the Geordie-ness, if that makes sense!
If someone was coming to see you for the first time, what would you want them to know, or would you want them to go in blind?
I would want them to know that they're going to see something different. Well, it's a weird one because if you come in and you're a fan of pop, I want you to enjoy it. If you're a fan of metal, I want you to enjoy it. There's some kinds of music that I don't like, but I don't want anyone to be put off - which I'm stood there with makeup and a black and white mask on, but yeah, I don't want people to be put off. It's just to go and experience it and make your own decision from it really.
What’s next for Geordio?
I've literally over the last few days been asked to do a gig at The Little Buildings. It’s like my home turf now. We've got a gig on Friday the 29th of May, at The Little Buildings, and I'm playing with Moss and the Last of the Fallen Angels. Keep an eye out on the socials. I'm going to do more cooking videos and there'll be lots of updates on the album and hopefully when that'll be coming out.