Catching up with Black Country, New Road at Sled Island Music Festival
Photo credit: Daman Singh (@damaan__)
Black Country, New Road have been nothing but jawbreakers since their inception. Three blissfully unique studio albums and a live record in, the group has defied expectations time after time. Now, the group has gone on their biggest tour ever. Black Country, New Road are still getting used to the feeling of hearing their own lyrics sung back at them. On their first conventional, the London ensemble have watched crowds grow more confident with every show, turning songs into something beautiful.
Treating every tour as a chance to rewrite what a Black Country, New Road show can be and inviting Calgary audiences into that evolving story for the first time. REVERIE had a chance to catch up with Charlie Wayne (drums), Luke Mark (guitar), Lewis Ewans (saxophone/flute) to talk half-serious schemes to moonlight as a wedding-band ABBA tribute act, collaborating with Damon Albarn and an offhand promise to remember a fan who declared they’d be famous in 10 to 20 years before sprinting away down the street.
REVERIE: Welcome to Calgary! Since we last spoke, you guys have gone on your first conventional tour. I know last time you mentioned this was your first time doing the album release and the traditional way of going on tour. What's that been like for you? How have the crowds received Forever Howlong?
LUKE: It's been great. Like, there's a few more people who know the words this time around, which is a new experience for us. It's really cool to see people enjoying the album even more than they did on record. I think that that's been like a bit of a theme. I think it's good live. So yeah, it's been really fun.
REVERIE: You've seen people receive the record. Now people know the words. How have people responded to the work compared to your early sounds? Because it was such a — I wouldn't say drastic — but it was such a big switch from Ants from Up There. How did you see people respond to the work now?
CHARLIE: I think that all of our live shows, kind of throughout every I guess album cycle, they've all been quite different. Every time we've kind of gone out on the road, we've always come with a brand new set of songs, more or less. So I think we're fairly used to expecting audiences to kind of enjoy a distinct live set each time. I think that when people come to our live shows, they more or less expect something to be fairly different from you know the thing they heard before if they came to a show previously.
REVERIE: Yeah, and recently you guys just worked on the Warchild Records album with “Strangers”. What was that experience like? I know it was such a diverse portfolio of artists on the same record. Did you guys end up collaborating with anyone?
CHARLIE: Yeah, It was a very interesting weekend. We sort of were there for most of it. We recorded our song in “technically” Abbey Road. We recorded it in the bike shed, sort of next door.
LUKE: Then they took photos of us, like walking up the stairs into the real studio.
CHARLIE: Yeah, a false narrative. But I did have a wonderful collaboration. So me, Georgia, May, we collaborated with Damon Albarn's choir. So after close conversations with Daman and his team, they invited us in to be part of the choir. I got sat next to Johnny Mar, which was great. We shared a lot of interesting musical ideas about like who's in tune, you know? Can you sing a D? No. Please, are you in tune? Are you a fucking idiot? Yes, probably. Thanks, Johnny. Sorry. It was an amazing afternoon and one I will look forward to repeating over in my head day in day out, year on year. It was very good.
Photo credit: Daman Singh (@damaan__)
REVERIE: It is quite a wonderful song, I must say, and it's nice to hear that you guys got to collaborate with Damon Albarn. Great choir experiences, from what I'm hearing. That reminds me. I know last time we spoke, you recommended Heavy Metal by Cameron Winter to me, and now it's everywhere. What's your newrecommendation? What are you guys listening to right now?
CHARLIE: The Beatles. [the group chuckles]
LUKE: The Beatles, yeah. Oh, Star Moles. Coming over to the UK soon. Great, great tunes. Yeah, check them out.
CHARLIE: I've listened to a band called Candelabro, who are a Chilean band who are really, really, really good. They put an album out last year that I've been banging out.
REVERIE: Since the windmill shows, you guys have done a lot of covers, and you've had covers kind of seep into your set list a lot. “How did The Ballad of El Goodo” make its way into the set list? And is there any chance of “Mamma Mia” ever coming back onto the set list?
LEWIS: Yeah, “Goodo” felt like a really obvious cover to do. It's a song we all really like. We're all big fans of Big Star, and it was a big inspiration for the most recent record and the stuff that we're making nowadays. We love power pop, and it's an easy song to learn. It's just a great vibe to play live. We already enjoy playing it. “Mamma Mia” will probably not come back. We're more likely to do a different song. [laughs]. Yeah, I mean Abba, maybe the “Name Of The Game”. That's more likely. Yeah, probably the best Abba song. [humming to the beat of the song]
REVERIE: That’s a bold call. What is everyone’s favourite ABBA song?
LEWIS: “Name Of The Game”.
CHARLIE: “The Winner Takes It All”.
LUKE: I don't know. Not the name of the game. [laughingly]
REVERIE: How did you guys even end up deciding on “Mamma Mia” when you did?
CHARLIE: It's very popular. We were also kind of considering maybe the finances of being in a band, and we realized that if we were to kind of moonlight as an ABBA tribute band slash wedding band, we'd probably be able to make you know a considerable amount of money on our sort of off season of not touring, but then yeah, realized they're actually quite hard to play.
LUKE: I think we nailed “Mamma Mia”, and then we tried to do “Chiquitita”, and it was really bad. REALLY bad. You can find it. It's not good. It was on the same release. So we sacked off the wedding band thing for now.
Photo credit: Daman Singh (@damaan__)
REVERIE It's your first time playing in Calgary and For Sled Island. What are you guys excited about? Is there anything particular? Have you guys had a chance to just go about town, see the city yet, or is there anything specific to try at the festival?
LEWIS: We had a little day out yesterday. We started off at the James Joyce Pub to watch the Canada-Qatar game. Good to see Canada absolutely whoop Qatar [cheers]. Then we went to The National to play a few frames, and I've fucked up my wrist a little bit as a result of that, so that's good. And we went next door to Spanky's Saloon Bar, and we watched them do a — what's it called — line dance.
LUKE: A kind of beginners social.
LEWIS: Yeah, it was like they were doing a kind of I don't know we call it a Kaylie, like dance teaching lesson kind of slash also the dance itself. I'm explaining that really badly. But we sat at the bar watching a bit of rodeo and the Mexico South Korea game. So yeah, that was what we did yesterday.
REVERIE: Sled Island is kind of this gateway into Canadian underground music for a lot of musicians. Are there any specific bands that you're excited to check out while you're in town?
CHARLIE: A couple of bands are supporting us tonight. One of them's got two drum kits. I see they're setting up, so that's gonna be pretty fun. That's gonna be quite interesting.
LEWIS: Yeah. Chrome Harvest. I asked them earlier if their name has got anything to do with Neil Young, given Chrome Hearts and Harvest, and there's no connection apparently. That's kind of cool. [laughs]
REVERIE: after the tour wraps, what's the next move for Black Country, New Road?
CHARLIE: I've recently got my mudlarking license, so I'm gonna be doing that quite a bit. I think just yeah, sitting by the Thames, just clawing through dirt to try and find you know like pottery coins. It's not necessarily band related, but you know that's gonna be taking up quite a lot of my time. [Lewis laughs] I think so. That'd be good. But yeah, no. Other than that,
LEWIS: I’m gonna build a rocket ship.
CHARLIE: I also want to thank all of our fans in post, in Calgary that may or may not have heard our show — but have heard this interview.
LUKE: And before I forget, we met this guy on the street who said, “Oh my god”. He was like, “are you BCNR?”, we're like, yeah. And he said, “Oh my God, I missed your show” and we were like, "No, actually, it's tomorrow.” He didn't say anything, then he said, "Remember me in 10 to 20 years when I'm famous.” And then he walked off. [everyone laughs}
CHARLIE: He like ran away and went, “YIPPIEEEE”
LUKE: It was absolutely awesome. So if that guy decides to come tonight, then come on stage.