Nine years of silence. Nine years, no one suspected that somewhere in Leeds, musical chaos was brewing. And now – they’re back. Chance & The Lucky Aces are here again, and getting rid of them now is no longer possible. Robert St John Smith, aka Chance, and his faithful Lucky Aces don’t claim world domination. Their ambition is simpler: to make at least one person smile. Literally one. Two – and the siren will go off. After a long pause, the band returned with the mini-album “Lunch With The Lucky Aces” (thanks to the mysterious Whatsit), and now has released “Wunderbar” – a dark, gothic version of the punk hit by Tenpole Tudor. It all started with one wrong chord on the piano, which Chance doesn’t really know how to play. The result? An orchestra of musicians who didn’t pass the audition for The Muppet Show, covered in dust in an abandoned hall, three opera singers and a dangerous amount of minor moods.

We welcome you to our website! We can’t wait to get to know you better. Nine years – that’s a serious break. All this time you were hiding from that very Wotsit in order to accumulate strength for a grandiose comeback?

Yes, it was serious, and that is possibly the first time the words serious and our band have shared a sentence. From previous adventures in other bands, one thing I wanted with The Lucky Aces was for it to be casual, fun, and free of arseholes. It turns out we may have interpreted that a little too enthusiastically.
Then one evening in the Frog and Toad public house, while I was nursing a cider or two, an omnipresent Wotsit materialised and announced that I had to reform the band and record National Anthem of Ancient Britons. Which is how we ended up making last year’s EP Lunch With The Lucky Aces. Strangely, neither the Wotsit nor the pub has been seen since. Make of that what you will.

From 2011 to 2025 – you’re like a musical underground that only the initiated know about. Such cult status instead of mainstream. Tell us, how do you cope with such a balance between creativity and recognition?

As a band, or a loose bunch of misfits as I prefer, we have always leaned toward making things that amuse us first. Most of our songs are born from phrases like, “wouldn’t that be fun to have a go at murdering?” or “what would a song about wanting to be a celebrity’s pair of shoes sound like?” We tend to leave recognition to other bands. Now I come to think about it, that might be why several of our members also play in other bands, especially our drummer, Brian, who appears to be in at least twenty of them.
I should add that we do not really have a fixed line-up, so if anyone out there feels they need a short holiday from being recognised, you would be extremely welcome to join us.

You mentioned that you don’t have a fixed line-up and anyone is welcome to join. Are there any requirements for candidates?

The first requirement is the ability to turn up. Second is the ability to produce a proper cup of tea. We are non-judgmental, even if you put the milk in first. It simply has to be decent. Close behind that is being a nice human, willing to laugh, and displaying roughly the same level of enthusiasm for rehearsals as for the drinks that follow it.
Only then do we consider musicianship. Technical skills are all very well, but we are far more impressed with someone who is prepared to have a go.

“Lunch With The Lucky Aces” became your “first swallow after” a long break, and in one review I came across the phrase: “Now they are back, there appears to be no getting rid of them.” Sounds almost like a diagnosis! Do you agree with such an assessment?

Completely.
Originally we planned a neat trilogy of EPs: Breakfast, Lunch, then Dinner With The Lucky Aces, and then call it a day. But after the reaction to Lunch, it now feels impolite not to keep serving courses. Who knows, we may end up applying for a late-night licence and following it with a lock-in.

Let’s talk about the latest single “Wunderbar”. You took the Tenpole Tudor classic from 1981, the original sounds like a beer festival in a bar, however your version… What did you do with it?

It began as an honest attempt to work out the chords on the piano. Small obstacle: I cannot really play the piano. The original sits in B-flat major, bright and beaming, perfect for a bar explosion. I landed in B-flat minor, which is more fog, old catacombs, and people going about in capes. We ended up inventing a backstory. The band you hear are the musicians who failed the auditions for The Muppet Show. Instead of going home afterwards, they simply stayed in the auditorium, forgotten, gently gathering dust, until one day somebody opened the door.
Structurally it is remarkably close to the original. Lyrically, if you still own your August 1981 copy of Smash Hits, you can sing along. Amazing what a tilt from major to minor can do.

Confess, whose idea was this? Name that person who woke up and thought: “You know what 2026 is missing? A good portion of 1981’s recklessness!”

Mine. I love the song. For years it has been my end-of-day reset button, a small parade of silliness and joy.

How far did you go in your “sonic blasphemy” and was there that very moment in the studio when after the phrase “fans of the original will eat us alive for this” you decided to make the sound even louder?

I do not think there was any fear of being eaten alive in the studio, but we did ask, on several occasions, who on earth was going to listen to it. The opera singer was certainly a gamble, but once we had created that darker space the elements began arriving one by one. It started with some orchestral strings, then an unexpected trombone, then, naturally, a timpani. Before long we looked up and realised there was a soprano in the room.

Have you already chosen the next victim for your musical experiments or have you decided to let the classics rest for now before storming their “golden hits” again?

Definitely back to our own material for the next few recordings, but I have been eyeing The Floral Dance. Most people will say Terry Wogan reached perfection with it in 1978.

However, shift the key, change the mode, and suddenly you are in a dusty bar somewhere in Cuba, with a mysterious figure singing about an unrequited love called Euphoni. It would be rude not to at least consider it.

Your main ambition – to make at least one person smile, but won’t a sudden smile from a second person become a reason for an emergency meeting about “unacceptable overfulfillment of the plan”?

I will report back when we locate the first one.

Having fun is central to what we do, and it has been true for every track we have made. The world feels complicated enough. Imagine if everyone simply tried to make one other person smile during the day.

I understand that you’re not planning to rest – two EPs coming up at once. The intrigue is building! Will they be just as theatrically-insane (in a good sense) as “Wunderbar”, or are you preparing something completely new?

Something new. Our next EP is already underway, titled Out of Aces (Autumn 2026), and for it we are digging out the synthesizers, opening the hairspray, and over-medicating. It is a definite change of direction and the closest we will ever get to a concept EP. What the concept actually is remains a mystery, even to us. That said, one of the tracks on Out of Aces is called Sentinent, which feels like a natural successor to Wunderbar, featuring three opera singers and an alarming quantity of minor-key behaviour.
Then, following that, comes Dinner With The Lucky Aces, a return to basics and our core subjects of history, bastards, and battles.

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