THERE is definitely a sense of history repeating in the Marr family.

Nile Marr is following in the footsteps of his famous dad – former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr – as a musician and charting a similar path.

He has been cutting his teeth in iconic Manchester venues and he has even been working on his second album with producer Jim Spencer who more or less lived in his family home when he was a kid.

Nile said: “It’s a funny one with Jim because I have known him since I was a very small child.

“Jim basically lived in our house growing up. The house I grew up in was also a studio and Jim was like the live-in engineer.

“I always got to watch him work so it felt very comfortable to team up with him. He still brings that old school way of doing things.

“I bet he was like: ‘Oh no, there’s another one of them...’”

Perhaps it was inevitable for Nile to be drawn to music given that upbringing.

The 27-year-old said: “There were always guitars around. They weren’t just objects. It’s not like they were hung up on the wall.

“There were guitars around because they were getting played all the time and I grew up in a studio. I thought I wasn’t interested in guitar until I was about 13 but every time I go around to my parents’ house I find a photo of me as a small child interacting with a guitar.

"One of my favourite songs as a kid was There She Goes by The Las. It still is. When Lee Mavers once came to the house my dad told him this and so he picked up a guitar and sang it to me.”

It was the first song that Nile learnt too.

“I remember my dad teaching me that,” he added.

So what was it like growing up with ‘indie royalty’?

Nile added: “We’d always have cool people in the house for various music projects or just to visit and my dad would get recognised if we went to the football.

“It was not like private jets. It was just people who would hang out at your house and play football with you in the back garden.

Warrington Guardian:

Johnny Marr

“Your dad’s still on your case about not doing your homework but we’d often sit down and discuss songs. I grew up with a knowledge of how records are made so when I listen to bands, I come into it with that experience.”

But it was not so much the Smiths that inspired Nile to be like his dad – it was more the bands that Johnny was in when Nile was a teenager like The Cribs and Modest Mouse.

And these days the pair are often spotted performing side-by-side.

Nile said: “Every once in a while, if we’re in the same place, we manage to get up on stage together.

“I got to play with him with Hans Zimmer at Radio City in New York. That was good fun.

“Then when I played at Night and Day Café on New Year’s Eve a few years ago he jumped up on stage with me there so that was pretty great. We play Crash by The Primitives – that’s sort of a Marr family party trick. I’m also doing a couple of shows with my dad at the start of August so we’ll see what we end up doing.”

Meanwhile Nile is also in film score composer Hans Zimmer’s live band where he gets to play songs from iconic movies in front of up to 70,000 people.

Nile, who has also worked on film soundtracks in the studio with Hans, added: “Even the warm-up show in LA was to 3,000 people.

"It was high stakes because it was in front of all these movie industry people and for the next gig we were one of the headliners at Coachella festival.

"This music means so much to so many people and every night we’d have people crying and really having a moment. I’m so grateful to have been part of that.

“There were some nights – especially during the outdoor concerts in the summer – where we’d be playing music from Interstellar or Gladiator and I’d almost feel like a passenger.

“I was taking it all in and realising what a big moment I was part of. For some gigs the energy was so intense.

“It’s a great discipline. I get to learn how to play the guitar in a completely different way.”

Nile admitted it will be a completely different experience playing an intimate show at Warrington’s new venue Live Bar on Friday, July 5 – but that is no bad thing.

He said: “It’s amazing to play in front of thousands of people but with that you also miss what’s really good about playing to 100 people in a little room and seeing the whites of their eyes. I’m lucky to be able to experience both.

“I know the town quite well because our bass player Callum Rogers is a native son of Warrington and I know the area has been crying out for an independent venue.”

Nile will be showcasing songs from his forthcoming second album, Are You Happy Now?

It is his follow-up to TV Broke My Brain which he released under the moniker Man Made in 2016.

He was inspired to write the new tracks when he was living in the Portland in the States with his wife Kristen as well as travelling a lot with Hans Zimmer and he started to miss Manchester.

Nile added: “I was the only Mancunian on this tour of loads of people and I got to go to these amazing cities but everywhere I went music fans would say that they love Manchester.

“It blew my mind that people know and love a city on a small island in the northern hemisphere.

“And I really started to miss being in Manchester. It made me want to write a load of new songs about how I felt about the place.”

Nile Marr performs at Live Bar in Barbauld Street on Friday, July 5. Visit facebook.com/livebarsuk