Tonight there were two support bands, why were you first to go on?
All this tour we've been going on second. We've had this rap/funk band (Pops Cool Love) going on first, then Dr. Phibes then Fishbone and I think maybe the tour manager, although I can't blame him, is a bit short sighted, thinks that the whole night will flow better of Phibes went on first. We just wanted an easy time, we're just working in the new set. We've just written a new album, all the songs we played tonight were new apart from Eye am the Sky, so all we want out of this tour is to the play songs and play them well.
The new material sounds much funkier, harder, why?
The first four years of the bands life was spent being really tight, after four years it's just become musical gymnastics. Whirlpool was a reaction against us being so strict in a sense, but this album the two styles are mixing, there is more discipline and we've also learned how to lay back.
When we were writing for Whirlpool we wanted to write an album which encompassed a feel, and the feel really was a smoking album, a great late night - semi chill out album. I think the new stuff is going to sound powerful, because when we play Whirlpool live it is always so much more powerful that the album, but that is because we are so tight in a sloppy way. When three of us hit something together, we fucking hit it so hard, we may all be out of time, but we'll hit it really hard and it just sound huge through the PA. Dave especially live mixes for a very powerful sound and with your head being at a Fishbone gig with Pops Cool Love you are going to have a hard funk edge in your head on the night. Its groovy. We had whirlpool in a Stoned groove and this is a little more funky. This album is going to be a concept album like Whirlpool, but this time were into stoned grooves as opposed to stoned meanders. We can go from something that is really mellow and funky to something that something that is so in your face, and to be in a band that has that in it's armour, why not use it? I don't see it as a totally radical change, it's the new us that we found together.
Whatcha been up to then?
The last two years we toured almost constantly, we wrote Whirlpool on the road and when we wanted to get this album together we just hired this cottage out and were there six times a week. We've demo'd the album three times and we are due to go in the studio next Tuesday, so we are in the studio for five weeks to do the album, that's going to go really smooth because we've played it so many times. I don't think the band honestly wanted to be together, we just wanted time off, but there was no time off, we had to get the album done. We weren't rowing or anything like that, but the feeling in the band was that we could do with some head space so we went away to Wales to rediscover ourselves. Really be ourselves with each other without being in photo sessions and interviews and things, so that is why we went to Wales instead of staying in Liverpool. Like I say we've been rehearsing six days a week, easily 12 hour days since January. It took us about two months just to agree on a direction. The whole album has a really inner city feel, a new age cave dweller type feel to it.
We've been writing the album and basically just been hanging out. When you go on tour, most people don't understand what touring is like, its madness. Total, total madness and you go a little off your head and you do because that is what is expected, that is the freedom you get you can do whatever you want because you are the band and you are on tour. It gets a little bit crazy, a little bit out of control and everyone has their own opinions and the reason you were out on tour was because of the three piece, because of the band and that is what really counts. So it took us a while to get back in; to writing again; to spending two days on tour going back down to wales and finding out that we like each other again, which is the whole reason why we started the band. So it's just like hanging out again, chilling out together.
We had this massive party that could be heard five miles away across the valley. We are on a house perched on the side of the valley. We moved the sound system pumped up. We went round in my van ( I was tripping and the time) got stopped by the police, there are all kinds of stories from that night. The living room became the chill out room, we went down and bought mattresses and filled the room with mattresses. Right next door to that, well there should have been doors but we took off the hinges, was the rave room, we had another chill out room in the kitchen and a massive fire in the garden. We organised the party two afternoons before hand and it just became a legendary party, fucking brilliant. There has been loads of that, loads of going out for walks, coming across a stream , finding a cliff and just saying 'jump it'. And we'd do it, we always do it. I like the adrenaline rush a bit of an addict. In the last video I jumped off a waterfall in Sierra Deguara?. It wasn't as dangerous as that.
Hazy Lazy Hologram
We were really excited about releasing that. It's like a reaction song. We just fancied a dose of melody, it was cool just American and sun.
What about the video?
We got a little bit of sponsorship and we put up the money ourselves which is the way we worked the album and the single so it was in keeping with the single which we financed ourselves. We found that there is no push, no money around, no record company willing to get off its fucking arse and put some money into us and take that chance. So we did it ourselves. We drove out there in my van and blow the exhaust in England but still manage to get over the Pyranese. We find the canyons in the Sierra Deguara part of Spain, just on the border with France, and we chilled out for ten days then shot the video in the canyons which are just colossal man, you've never seen anything like it. Then we took the video in the desert being bombed. On one side of us was the Spanish RAF practising bombing raids, on the other was this mountain that looks like its been chiselled because no one has touched in years, totally uninhabited it is somewhere that no one lives no one has been there. So you have the two extremes, something which is untouched but with technology behind you. So we shot the video there, then we went off to the south of France and filmed on the sands San Marlo. It was good, it was really great, but then when we came back from that we found that all our equipment had been nicked from Lee's house in Liverpool. We were insured but we literally just got the
money through last month, that was two days before we were supposed to do the All about Eve tour.
I didn't hear about that
It was really low key, it was just something that we wanted to do. We are not all massive fans of them but we needed to get used to big venues which is good experience for when you are doing the Fishbone thing : well like I've done this before. So you are not in awe of the venue, you can also get used to doing supports where you have fuck all space and three people in a line and you have to learn to communicate. During out headline tours I'm at the back and all I have to do is look slightly to one side, I can see Lee and Howard and all they have to do is look at me because they know where I'm going to be, but on this one three people in a line is weird. We have adjusted to it quickly this time, we are flowing. Manchester is going to be a cracker.
Theft
That I am totally against. My moral, never steal somebody elses work tools. If you are going to nick, nick from the big shops, from the corporate industries because they are insured to fuck. Luckily we got insurance two weeks before we went and it has taken this long to get the money because they thought it was a hoax, they thought we'd stashed our stuff. So never nick any bodys work tools.
Keith and I went on to discuss the merits of family and the life of a nomad, but that story is best kept for another time.