25/05/11
Going back to maybe 2007, that’s when you won Norwich’s famous Next Big Thing competition. What kind of catapult was that for you?I think one of the big things it did for us was kind of make us realise that, you know, we didn’t have to be just, I mean we always do the band for fun. It’s always been about doing it for fun. But it kind of made us realise we can do more than just that as well. We can have fun and bring it to more people. We kind of didn’t realise there was that sort of support for us. So it was great, it just made us realise what we could do and then we went on, a couple of months later, to do the Maida Vale sessions with Huw Stephens and that really gave us a big boost and made a few more people aware of us really.
It seems like you came from a golden age of Next Big Thing winners. I mean look at Ed Sheeran who won the year after you. Do you chart each other’s progress really? Do you think ‘wow, we’re all on the crest of a wave here’?Well I mean it’s funny, I’ve known Ed like since I was like quite young, like circles of friends and stuff and it’s always, I don’t know, it’s always nice to see, even if I didn’t know him, someone from Norwich doing well. It’s great because you want to see people from your city doing well. It’s good to see.
Looking back, what was inspiring you all to make music? Katie and Evan were at school together and me and Fab sort of came later. But I started playing bass when I was really young, I don’t know, I think I started playing bass because no one else did and that kind of annoyed me, like, there’s got to be someone! We just listened to music non-stop, I mean, it’s just like when people have their sort of passion and stuff, for all of us it’s music. So I think once we found that we realised we had to play an instrument to be in a band. We basically get to do what we love, for our life if you know what I mean, so it’s great.
Rory, I’ve seen you doing solo stuff before around Norwich, do you all have your solo endeavours, or is it all together now?No I think I am the only one that’s deferred. I’ve been doing it for a while, on and off so I don’t really think about it much, but no, I mean I don’t know if any of us really have a big enough attention span to really take in another thing apart from The Kabeedies or enough energy. But yeah, we’re pretty much all, apart from me obviously, completely just The Kabeedies.
There was a big moment for you a couple of years back now when you got to play Glastonbury. Tell us about the moment you found out you were going to play…It was kind of surreal really, it kind of always is for things like that, it’s like when we got the - I cant remember whether it was an email or a phone call, and you’re just like… My dad’s our manager and he just called me and said “Oh, you’re playing Glastonbury”; it’s just such a strange thing to hear someone say. It was amazing, for us. I mean in the same year we played Latitude and Glastonbury was amazing for an experience and for us to say, “We’ve played Glastonbury”, is amazing. Latitude though I think was the highlight for us, playing to all those people and playing to our friends, it’s what we all think is such an amazing festival. That was a great feeling for us, playing Latitude as well.
So what’s making you count down the days this year? What have you got on your calendar?On Saturday we’ve just come back from 3 and a half weeks in Germany and then we’ve got masses of recording and songwriting booked in this year this year. I’m hoping we get a new album ready by Spring. That’s it really, I mean we are famously slow song writers; we produce like, 2 songs a year so this year we are kind of forcing ourselves , we’re like locking ourselves away and forcing ourselves to write some songs. And then we’ve got a tour in May, in England, which is 8 or 10 days I think, with These Ghosts. And then we’re touring in the Autumn I think, once we’ve written some songs!
You’re playing Playfest which is obviously a new festival to this area. How good is it to have things like that on our doorstep?I think it’s really important, I mean, especially when you go to other towns and other cities and you see what they’re doing and you know your town is on par with theirs as far as culture and as far as music. You see them putting on festivals and things like that and you’re like what?! We should have that! And the line-up’s great. What’s weird is they’re doing it in the grounds of the school that Katie and Evan went to.
Oh they went to Eccles did they?Yeah it’s really strange, but no it’s great, I’m really looking forward to it; it’s good that as well as something big like Latitude in this area, you’ve got something smaller that’s putting on some genuinely really good bands. And loads of local bands as well.
Yeah, yeah we’re being ruddy spoilt this year! It’s very nice indeed.Yeah, I mean it’s very easy for a festival to overlook local bands, but its great.
You mentioned songwriting, and it being painfully slow, but you’ve got such a cohesive sound, I was just wondering about who writes the songs, do you do it all together?Yeah, yeah we do it all together, that’s probably why it takes so long. It’s kind of the case that someone will bring in an idea to a practice and then the other three will have such conflicting ideas for three months over one song, but eventually a song comes out of it. We all contribute and I think that’s a really important thing for us. I think it works for some bands having a main songwriter who comes in and is like ‘this is how it goes, this is what you’re going to play’. With us it’s just, everyone nails the one point they are happy about and we end up with a song everyone enjoys instead of just half the band. So it does take a while but we end up with results we prefer personally.
Yeah it always has seemed like there’s a real cohesion to it, its like an open forum, you can hear it because you parry between each other quite a lot.Yeah I think that’s the thing because we’ve always enjoyed having three vocals and strong kind of clear vocals instead of just a lead singer with backing vocals. It’s a nice thing to be able to have in a band. When you are thinking about song writing it’s a nice thing to think about, you’ve got three vocals to work with as well as the instruments.
It was very exciting when I was sitting in my living room watching an XBox advert, not really paying any attention and I thought, ‘Shit, that’s the Kabeedies!’ I can imagine that was rather exciting for you too.Yeah that was another surreal moment. We got an email from an ad agency in America and they just said ‘Microsoft wants to use your song ‘Come On’ for their new Xbox advert.’ It’s possibly the oldest song we have which was the weirdest thing. I mean that song is so old it’s just like… out of all the songs they could pick?! But it is amazing. It’s the kind of thing that hardly ever happens and for it to come out of the blue like that was amazing. It was another surreal thing it took us a long time before any of us in the band actually saw it on television. And when I did, I think my mum was watching Strictly Come Dancing or something and it was the break. So weird, really weird because it doesn’t seem like real looking at it on the TV.
Do you feel like you are almost in two places at one time?A little bit yeah because when you see the one on YouTube you are just like ‘oh it’s only on the internet, there’s millions of videos on the internet’ and then when it comes to being on television, you’re like, this is actually quite freaky.
I’ve been listening to ‘Santiago’, which comes out next month - that must signal the new album not long after that, I think you just said spring didn’t you?Well it’s a case of writing the songs; we’ve got a few songs for the album. For the first album it was a process of these are the songs we have recorded over three and a half years to put on an album. And with this we want to write an album from start to finish and make it really like a focused effort for an album, so we want to write as many songs as possible so we can kind of pick and really make an album that we all really love. It’s going to take us a long time to record because we also take famously long to record. I mean ‘Santiago’ took us three or four days just for that one song.
So you’re taking your wee time about it there.Yeah everyone will hear the album eventually.
I guess with people kind of listening to music in less than traditional ways now, publishing opportunities, like the Xbox advert, they must be really important to you. Are you trying to push yourself wider?Yeah I mean when you realise when you speak to labels and things like that, they are not going to make any money off physical sales, especially on a single and they are not going to on any downloads. So the one things bands want, labels want and everybody wants is publishing, just in case something happens. Like with the Xbox advert; that was such an old song, just like a B-side to a single. There are publishing opportunities everyday, people are always looking for music so it’s just getting yourself in their face, if you know what I mean, and them knowing your song. I mean I had no idea how they found the song for Xbox, we never gave it to anyone. Yeah it’s a big thing for bands because there’s not a lot of opportunity, especially at this level, to keep yourself going financially or getting your name out there as well, without a label or anything like that.
You’ve made a video based on Alberto Granado and then he died, as you documented on facebook. Are we allowed to suggest some other people that you could make a video of with the vain hope they might keel over?Yeah that could be a whole new album. Do you actually want me to tell you people I would like to die?
I could suggest a few if you like? If you fancied making a video about Jeremy Kyle or something, I think you’d be doing the world a service.I think that would make a great video as well, especially if he died.
It would be aggressive and beautiful at the same time I imagine.Yeah, I think there’s a fair few people. I think it would really be anyone in a band who has tried to make anyone else’s efforts to be in a band any harder. People who really think that their band is more important than anyone else’s band. Those kind of people, anyone like that. It’s difficult enough as it is being in a band.
I’m clutching at straws now Rory, but I have grabbed something from your influences on the old Myspace, Welsh rugby. Tell me why and tell me you are all massive Welsh rugby fans…Well, Evan our guitarist is sort of half Welsh I think.Well I thought with a name like Evan he possibly could have been.We did actually for quite a long time we did have a bit of an obsession with Colin Charvis. I think he was the one Welsh rugby player we all actually knew of. You may actually have noticed a lot of our influences aren’t really music based.
Not so much, yeah.I think that’s because we’re influenced a lot by day-to-day stuff and not just music.
Yeah like the Birdcage pub.Yeah I mean Katie works there now. But I think our influences were put up like years ago, they are just things that seems so funny when I look at them now – like so old. But The Birdcage pub, Katie works there. We don’t go there as much now but we used to go there all the time like years ago.
Tell us what it is about Norwich that keeps you representing and saying that you are a Norwich band?That’s a difficult one. I think it’s a lot of the time when you go to other cities on tour and you are like wow, you’ve really not got like any opportunities as a band and you kind of realise the support there is in Norwich to be a band. I mean Norfolk in general. We wouldn’t have been able to do Glastonbury and Latitude without the help of BBC introducing. I mean Norwich Introducing are amazing and the same in Suffolk and you really feel in Norwich they are actually using those things. You go to other towns and they are like ‘we have never even spoken to our Introducing station’. You can always find a way to play a gig, there are always promoters wanting to put on a show, there are always other bands who want to play with you. The amount of times we go on tour and a band says ‘we want to play Norwich, can you put us on?’ and it not a problem because we’ve got the place to put them on, we’re happy to put them on. It’s just a good city for culture and music.
I feel like we are all part of a generation that can actually make things happen in Norwich and that’s the most exciting thing, to be part of its tapestry really.I was on a meeting with the bid for city of culture and the ideas that were going round and stuff and it really made you realise how much people are prepared to put into Norwich as far as a city of culture. I think it’s a shame that Norwich weren’t recognised because I think there is a lot going on that people don’t know about at the moment.
Emma Roberts
The Kabeedies play The Waterfront on April 20th and also Playfest on 28th / 29th May. For tickets, go to www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk and www.playfest.co.uk.