GOOD SHOES

AR: Are you enjoying it?

RJ: Yeah, yeah lots. The best thing about being in a band is that we’ve been to a lot of places in Europe I probably never would’ve ended up going to – that’s probably what I enjoy most. Then the last tour we did we were playing to the biggest crowds like the Astoria... it’s just a strange place to be because my whole perception of it has changed. Three years ago I was seeing bands all the time, buying the CDs but now I’m in a band it’s such a different thing to how you perceive being in a band.

AR: Because you see the mechanics of it all?

RJ: Yeah you see how it all works – the illusion is taken away but it’s still really a laugh… to get paid to play music is not difficult.

AR: So do you owe it all to Artrocker?!

RJ: Yeah, Artrocker has probably been the magazine that has received us best. They’ve just been a really big help. They’ve given us gigs and giving us consistently good press. My dad showed me something they’d written about us when I saw him last. We’re playing a gig for them soon. You know that every year they do those gigs – and so many of the bands I love I’ve seen at Artrocker shows for the first time. It’s been such a big help for us, yeah it’s been really nice.

AR: What’s it like touring?

RJ: The only bad thing is when all our friends in London plan to go out whereas the only time we’re definitely not going to get sent away to do stuff is Christmas or two weeks in the summer. So you can arrange to do something and you’ll be suddenly told that you’ve got to play a gig somewhere. It's not necessarily really bad but after a while it can irritate. It can all become a bit hectic. So when you’re on tour you’re going out drinking because it’s so easy to do. It’s fun to just do that and then when you come off tour you see your mates and go out again… it’s probably not conducive to having a healthy liver! But if that’s the worst thing about being in a band then it’s not a hard job, is it really?!

AR: How important are your Raynes Park roots to you?

RJ: I can’t really write about anything else. I can’t write about living in New York or anything. I write about where I’m from or the stuff I’ve lived in my life and it just happens that I went to Raynes Park High School and I live in Morden. It was never a big deal to us. You just make music and you don’t think about it until you release it on an album and then everyone starts picking up on little things you’ve said and you sort of regret that you’ve written certain lyrics when you get asked so much. But where you grow up there’s good and bad - I really like where I grew up, so it’s all right.

AR : Any new material planned?

RJ : Yeah we’ve finished about six songs for the second record and we’ve got about six more ideas in different stages of completion. We haven’t really worked on anything for a couple of months. The way we write is one of us will come up with an idea and we’re all come together and make it a song. Hopefully by the time we go to record we’ll have about twenty songs… and we’ll try and make another good album.

AR : What do you have planned for 2008?

RJ : I’d like to go to America. Our record label wants to release our album there but it seems pointless to do such a thing if we’re not going to go there. I’d like to go to Japan but let’s just see what happens. It’s probably another tour in March for a while. Then festivals over the summer and then recording in between that period. Then the next album out at the end of 2008 or early 2009.