T (Tohar) A (Addie) G (Geordie Greep) S (Shank [Seth Evans]) M (Morgan) C (Cameron)
T: Let’s try it again. I’m Mr. Green Genes. Addie?
A: and I’m Exhibit A. And we are here with
G: Grandad, Shank.
T: What have you guys been listening to recently?
G: Uh, Leo Ferre, a great French singer and poet. Uh, a lot of salsa music of Hector Lavoe and uh, Willie Colon and Rubén Blades and um, all those sorts of things.
What about you, Shank?
S: I’ve been listening to, uh, a lot of Joe Zaiwanul, keyboard player. Um, quite a lot of Arthur Russell’s “World of Echo” on repeat recently. And, um, a bit of Thin Lizzy as well.
T: Zaiwanul – Are you taking a lot of inspiration from Weather Report?
S: More of the stuff that he did with Mars Davis than Weather Report. Weather report’s still cool.
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T: You guys have good stories about bikes?
G: Uh, cycling proficiency exam? I didn’t do that.
T: A cycling proficiency exam?
S: You don’t have that?.
T: No. Tell me about it. I don’t think anyone will know what that is on this.
S: When you’re, when you’re like nine, all these, you do this like fake, fake driving license for bikes. It doesn’t actually have any sort of like bearing on anything. It’s just a like, it’s like a course.
So it’s not still Youi. No kidding.
T: Any other stories about bikes?
S: I’ve never been a good cycler
G: I’ve never been a good cyclist either. Funneling enough. Bikes and me are kind of like me and the sea. I kind of like it from afar. I don’t really swim. And I don’t really ride bicycles apart from today.
A: When did you learn how to ride a bike?
G: Well maybe it was like eight or six, seven, whatever. Somewhere around that age.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Shank, – You’re still, you did let me, – I’ll take you steering, bro.
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T: So we’ve already broken down the bike. What’s the worst interview you guys have ever had?
G: Um, to be honest, most of them, the interviews are crap. Yeah. The only reason we’re doing this stupid stuff is to make it vaguely interesting to keep it, you know, at least exciting.
A:Yeah. Interviews are not very fun.
S:This is fun
G: coming the interview,
A: but this is fun.
G: this is cool. We’re getting some speed now. Cameron. Cameron. Cameron, Shank!
C?: You need to relax man.
G: I don’t, you’ve almost smashed into a car about four times now. When I get down to writing a will, the one thing I’ll specify is that Shank does not drive the car. Yeah.
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T: You guys have worked with Can Front Man, Damo Suzuki?
G: Yeah.
T: Who are your guys’ favorite or, not favorite – Who are you guys’ dream collaborators?
G & S: Dream collab. Dream collaborator.
G: Maybe like Jeff Wayne.
S/C: Jeff Wayne,
G: uh, or. EgBerto gto. Is Monte Uhhuh or
M: Angus Young. Angus Young. That’s certainly up there.
T: Tell me about Angus Young.
M: A legend of the game, mate. Like it doesn’t really get more epic than that, you know? Yeah. There’s a saying that we’ve been using a lot, which is fair play and that applies a lot.
T: I have a very serious question now. Stopping. Yeah. Take this right dude. Any, uh, any specialty British foods you miss on tour? British cuisine.
G: Yeah. Bri, British chocolate Bars are like, you know,–
A: British chocolate bars?
G: Chocolate bars.
C: Chocolate bars.
G: Chocolate bars. Yeah. They’re, they’re undoubtedly and inarguably better than the American ones. The guy best, they just, just said it’s best in the world. English guy.
T: How did you guys meet Black Country, New Road?
G: Um, I used to babysit for Lewis’s brother.
A: No way.
G: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I knew him for that.
A: How old was Lewis’s brother when you were babysitting?
G: Uh, like 12. Oh. He was kind of like, you know, uh.
Basically, you know, he couldn’t really look after himself that well. Mm-hmm. So he needed like people to come over and look after him. My younger brother, um, yeah. ’cause those guys are brothers as well. That’s, that’s Lewis’s brother, his older brother Shane.
T: No kidding.
G: Yeah. Yeah.
A: How has it been touring with him?
S/C?: Really good fun, to be honest. Uh, nice to have a mix of quite different styles of music, but also shared, um, shared influences as well. And also they’re just great fun.
T: What are those shared influences?
G: Um, I don’t know, like Monty Python and um, uh, Harry Hill.
T: Can we expect to always look on the bright side as the, uh, encore for tonight’s show?
G: No. So I wouldn’t get your hopes up.
T: Who do you guys consider your peers in that case musically? If, uh, if you were to think who is in the same musical generation at the same level?
G: ABBA maybe.
T: Beyond peers, who are your influences? I know the Cavelcovers included King Crimson, Taylor Swift, Captain Beefheart,
G: I’d add, um, who are we gonna add to the list of I and Shank?
S: Oh, um, um, um,
G: hard to think Tie and Booth,
S: tie and Booth. Bartok, Jason Myraz .
G: Um, Jason Berg. Um, what b Um, how about a little bit of
G: Barbara Streisand?
T: Barbara Streisand, yes. Yeah.
S: Um, Sherry Pie.
G: Sherry Pie. Yeah, she’s good. Um, Lily pad. Lily pad. The Frogs. The Frogs. Yeah. The Frogs. Um, honestly, a sick man I think. Um. Pedestrian crossing. Oh yeah. One of my favorite groups out of Denmark.
C: Fusion. Five. Yeah. Fusion.
G: Um, kin be struck. Oh yeah.
C: Hey, take it easy on the speed. grandpa sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
T: Any bands from back home do you think need to find more recognition globally or at least in the states?
G: Uh, just Kim Fricks.
Sand. Yeah.
A: Should we go offroading O And the heroes grow a band called o. O, yeah. Yeah. Just the letter O full. Just o Full stop. I like that.
G: They’re good. It’s like, um, Barry turns saxophone and drums. Oh. Oh, that’s really cool. Just two people and then they play energetic, fun, funky. Black House kind of. It’s good.
It’s great. Look it up with some, I think they have a couple things on YouTube, so check it out.
T: Is this a band that you used to play with?
G: They came on one of us. Oh, no kidding.
T: Like I say, there’s not a lot of love for the royal family stateside.
M:Nah,
T: not with. Our generation, I don’t know about in England, but it’s, it is a generational thing, right?
M: Yeah. It’s like our parents’ generation or the generation above that. They’ve obviously grown up with her being this like, uh, you know God-like figure, but you grow up and you realize that that shit don’t mean anything.
The royals are inherently weird, aren’t they? Yeah. I mean, they’re incestuous, man. Yeah. I’m saying my grandparents were like first generation. Immigrants from Jamaica and,
T: oh, no kidding.
M: You know what I mean? It’s, it’s crazy actually, I was telling Seth about it the other day that what’d say there’s this sting mm-hmm.
Uh, that is quite popular within the Caribbean diaspora where, uh, my grandma’s got a cabinet of like unused cutlery plates and glasses, that will like not be touched. I remember one day I kind of realized how random it is, bearing in mind her front room’s quite small. It takes up a lot of space and I was like.
Man, what’s going on there? She was like, oh, for when the queen comes. And that’s an actual thing.
T: Really.
M: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That they, that they do, you know? No kidding. Which is obviously bizarre, you know, when you actually think about what that means. But of course, for them, it’s like they don’t, she came from a country where the queen was like, you know,
T: the head of state was really the queen.
M: Yeah, yeah. Do you know what I mean? So it’s really interesting, man. Really interested is Jamaica,
T: forgive me if I’m wrong, isn’t Jamaica making a move to have their head of state become an elected like president soon?
M: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s the, that’s the plan. I’m not, I that Yeah. You know?
Absolutely. People gotta choose, man. Mm-hmm.
T: My research advisor is Jamaican. He was telling me all about it. Right. Yeah.
M: Right, right. I’m gonna be there in, in, uh, January. Oh, fun. Next year. I haven’t been for like 20 years, so I Wow, really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And of course I’ve got like loads of family out there, so.
Right. Yeah.
A: Are you just going to visit?
M: Yeah. Me and my family going out there. Awesome. Awesome. I’ll be out there for like three weeks and then probably go to Rio for like a week.
A: Oh, fun.
M: And just fully, I ain’t doing shit. Yeah. A we’ve had, yeah.
A: It’s been a, an absolute year for you guys.
M: Yeah. It’s been chaos.
Mm-hmm. In the best possible. Possible. Yeah.
T: I mean, it’s not even been a year since you were in Berkeley, you know, that was in April, right? Yeah. That feels like it was ages ago, man.
A: How was, how was festival season for you guys?
M: Uh, it was cool.
A: I feel like festivals are really draining.
M: Yeah. It’s, it’s a lot of flying.
Yeah. That’s, that’s kind of what takes a lot of your energy, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, and it was, it was fun. We had some really good festivals and mm-hmm. Dah, dah, dah. But it’s, it’s just like inherently exhausting. Yeah, I can
A: know. Imagine it’s also hot and you’re outside and Yeah.
M: I fuck with the heat, but yeah, we’re flying all the time.
It’s not, yeah.
T: did Addie tell you that she saw you at like two different festivals?
A: Oh yeah. I saw y’all at Primavera and then I saw, I caught your set in Central Park. Oh. So in New York. I was living in new in Brooklyn over the summer.
M: Sick. Sick.
Yeah, it was super cool. There are some really like great free shows, like the New York Parks department does like a lot of cool stuff.
M: That’s, I think that’s a really cool thing. It’s really cool. Really cool. Yeah.
T: So what’d you guys do before this?
G: We did the watch and the bags all a, and then we’ve been in the city not doing much to be honest. Um, we got in town yesterday, it was a friend of ours, birthday. So you went to Benihana.
A: Oh fun.
G: Which was cool. Have you ever,
A: had you ever been to Benny Hana?
G:No, I never heard of it.
Isn’t it fun? It’s funny, yeah.
T: They do the little onion volcano for you.
G: Oh yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
A: They slip the egg up in the air and
G: Yeah, it was very cool. The whole thing. They threw the egg in the guy’s mouth.
T: What’s next for you guys?
G: After this tour, um, we go home for three days and then go over to Europe, going around there for three or four weeks. Then we come back to London for two weeks, then we go to Mexico days. Then we come back to the UK for a little bit, and then we go to Japan and Korea. Then it’s the end of the year workwise, and then the band is over.
G: We, we, this is true. Yeah. We’ve been thinking about ending it, so like it’s probably the last couple tours that we’re really,
T: really
G: no. Yeah. That’s serious. Wow. So we’ll see how it pans out. But the general feeling now is not good.
A: tired?
G: No, no, no. Just like, you know, um, we’ve had a good one. We wanna quit where we head.
Yeah, that’s fair. You guys have solo projects you’re working on, or new groups that you’re thinking? I, I want to become a train driver. Really? Yeah. It’s the best paying job in London.
T: You supporting the strike right now?
G: I don’t really give a shit. I like that it, it’s more just like, it’s fun, it’s enjoyable, it’s low hours, it’s high wages, and it requires not too much mental ingenuity, which is beautiful.
Yeah.
S: Left, left, left.
T: I suppose you can never take a wrong turn too.
S: No, you’re good now. That was just a little drain.
G: Oh right. Sorry Shank.
S: You can never take a wrong turn…
