MPF2026 FIRST TIMER SPOTLIGHT: SMOKING FINGERS

In the built up to MPF2026 John Porter is exploring bands who are playing Manchester Punk Festival for the first time. John kicks things off by speaking with Smoking Fingers.

If my second year of this is teaching me anything, it’s that the scene is safe. I’m getting older, and thanks to deteriorations in my cerebral palsy, less mobile, but younger punk bands are springing up all the time. There’s no greater example of that than when I caught up with Smoking Fingers. Here’s a band that’s full of youthful enthusiasm, cheery chat, and a burning desire to make an impact. In a jaded musical world, thank god for that. Let’s examine…

Who are Smoking Fingers?

Good question, as they’ve gone through some long journeys to find that out themselves. Put simply, they’re a ska-punk trio from the Isle Of Man, part of what seems to be a supportive, growing scene out in the ‘Crown Dependency’, whatever that is.

Put longer, they’re a band that’s long tried to find their name, identity, and style. Originally forming via a college music course – how comforting to know that young people still a) do music courses in a devastated time for the arts and b) still form bands) – Ewan (singer/guitar), Alaisha (drums), started things off, before recruiting Aedan (bass) from a media course. As Ewan describes it: “I wanted to be in a band…and these two already were, so I poached them! We figured out we liked the same sort of music, did a couple of jam sessions together after college, and eventually, started taking it seriously, within about 2-3 months, we were signed on to do a gig; eight songs, four of them covers!”

Now, first, the name: the band played that first gig, and a few others in their embryonic career, as the amusingly-named Dysfunction Junction (which I quite liked, to be honest), before going on an odyssey to land on today’s name: Smoking Fingers. They tell me the band was almost called ‘Aedan Says No’, on account of their bassist’s dislike of many suggested names (he said no to that one too, sadly), which also might be a good one to copyright if you’re out there looking for an idea.

The name, the sound, the vision

Eventually landing on Smoking Fingers, the band tell me that it was partly down to the sign you make while holding a cigarette in your hand. Go ahead, do it – you’ll see what I mean. A pose they hold on both their logo and promotional pictures, it seems to me an excellent way to induce audience participation, and have a global sign for your fanbase as well. Ewan concurs: “Funnily enough, we got Smoking Fingers because… it’s meant to be a sort of play on words – like you use your smoking fingers to put your fucking [middle] fingers up and shit. So that’s what we were going for.”

While the name was eventually secured, finding their sound wasn’t particularly easy, either. “Me and Aedan were itching to be in an original band… we were in a cover band,” says Alaisha. “We were itching to write music. Then when we met Ewan – very competent lyricist – we were like, ‘He can write songs. Let’s rip.’” What those songs became, though, was a bit more difficult. Eventually, however, the truth reveals itself.

Ewan picks up further: “We wanted to be in a ska band… We said, ‘Why don’t we try a ska punk song?’ and Aidan was like, ‘I hate ska punk… I don’t like it.’ And he was like, ‘Well, if we write a ska song, we’ll write a punk song – we’ll write one for you for you if you write a ska song with us. So we wrote a ska song… and then…I came in the next week, like, ‘I’ve got another ska song(!)…thankfully, now he actually loves [ska] more than we do. He knows more bands than I will ever know.”

Ska can be divisive at the best of times – in fact, Ewan tells a hilarious story about one of their opening gigs (“One of our earlier gigs… we were waiting to go on stage, and someone just came and sat at the table with us and was like, ‘Oh, I’m here with my friends. They all hate ska.’ I was like, ‘Alright, thanks for the burst of confidence right before we go on!’” he cracks.), but the band have clearly settled into their sound.

Their writing stems from, in Ewan’s words, “…scrolling through Facebook for an hour or two, and I will see numerous things that piss me off… most of my lyrics, 90% come from either being hungover or pissed off – or both!”, whereas musically, there’s elements of bands they admire and revere, like Faintest Idea, Random Hand, and, according to this writer’s ear, Operation Ivy (seriously, go listen to Smoking Fingers, similarly shorn of brass as Ivy are, and tell me you don’t hear the same thing), but they’re fiercely independent, too.

“The only ska-punk band on the island…”

Perhaps their independence comes from the scene they come from – the Isle Of Man punk scene, is, by its very nature, somewhat cut off from the mainland (the band’s stories of logistical issues to transport equipment and themselves, but helped by the scene around them, are both heartwarming and sound like a complete pain in the arse). Still, the bands know how to take care of each other. “There’s typically… one, two punk gigs a month tops, but it’s usually the same crowd, sort of bands. But everyone’s really lovely and supportive. We would not be anywhere without the Manx Punks – Twist and Jenny and all of the Manx Punx. We would not really be where we are now, even just for learning, setting up gigs and stuff.” They also cite local bands Half Naked Headline, Croteau and The 138 as particularly giving them a helping hand.

Touring the world and elsewhere

So, what next? This year seems to be becoming a little blur for the Fingers – they’ll be on the mainland a lot, not just for MPF, but for Rebellion festival too. Ewan picks up on the moments they learned they were doing both: “When we started the band, we made a bit of a bucket list of stuff we wanted to do, and we thought it’d be like five years before we got asked to do either [MPF or Rebellion]… and now we’re two years in, and we’re playing both of them in the same year. Getting them was exciting, although MPF is the only one that caused me to burn the pancakes I was making!”

Alaisha picks up on a similar theme: “We went last year anyway, and were so incredibly excited to just go…I couldn’t keep still!” (Writer’s note: She can barely keep still anyway – she’s a consistently enthusiastic and happy presence in the room!) “So the fact that we get to do it, but also play on the Friday as well, means we get to play, and watch all these bands too – I’d be excited anyway, but getting to play is just the cherry on top.”

The present and the future

What you can expect from Smoking Fingers at MPF is songs you haven’t heard before. Currently, there’s only four tracks out there and known – but the band tell me that not only will there be some new songs in the set at MPF, but they’re likely to form the base of a new album: “We’re currently just finishing up the songs for our album and we’re in touch with a producer to start recording in the next couple of months, once we’ve gigged them a bit and polished them up, so you’ll hear them at MPF!” Evan tells me.

You sense they can scarcely believe how far they’re moving and how fast, but their enthusiasm and love almost demands it. Ewan talks wistfully of wanting to be in a band since he was a child (he was initially a pianist, it turns out!), while Alaisha was inspired by the idea of being Roger Taylor, having seen Bohemian Rhapsody: “He’s sat on the drums in front of all those people, getting to do something that looks fun…right, well, I want to do that…and as the correlation of, “Wait, you don’t have to just be a drummer – you can turn into a drummer, you can learn,’ that was it.” she says.

Really, though, to come back to the top, what you’re almost certain to get with Smoking Fingers is a love for the game, authenticity, a bouncy ska-punk sound that’s eminently listenable, and a band that absolutely loves what it’s doing. “We sort of rushed into it a little bit, but it has been quite cool seeing how much progress we’ve managed to make with our original music in two years,” Ewan says. He’s not wrong. This is a band playing far beyond its age and experience, and it really feels like them opening Gorilla for the weekend could well set everyone up for a wonderful weekend – not least of all, the band themselves.

Get your smoking fingers at the ready…there’s gonna be a show.

Smoking Fingers will play Gorilla at 4pm on Good Friday, April 3rd.

Grab your MPF2026 tickets now.