Skindred
On the first day of Download Festival we chatted to Skindred members Mikey and Arya about the band, its future and Download.
-Last night was the Kerrang! Awards, and you won the Devotion Award.
Mikey: Devoted to too much vodka and white wine.
Arya: Yeah, devoted to me being sick and having the hangover from hell.
-Heavy night then?
Arya: Yeah, but I was in bed at one o'clock.
Mikey: Dude, you were in bed way before that, you just didn't know it yet.
Arye: I've just been told by our photographer friend that I was blocking Alice Cooper and making a tit out of myself.
Mikey: We all do it.
Arya: It was my turn last night. It's all uphill from here.
-Obviously you're looking forward to the weekend. It's the acoustic set tonight?
Arya: Yes, six o'clock on the Jager stage, we're headlining.
-Will you be mixing up the set-list between that and the main stage?
Arya: They're totally different beasts.
Mikey: You cannot compare the two, really.
Arya: There's only going to be Mikey and Benji doing it. Me and Dan won't do the MTV Unplugged sorta thing. We always thought it was just better doing the songs just with guitar and vocals.
-Who approached who for that set?
Arya: They approached us actually.
Mikey: We did a lot of them in the States.
Arya: We actually did a few acoustic tracks for our record, and we did them as a full band. There was an option of doing it as a full band, but we just scratched that.
Mikey: It's logistically easier, it worked out better to do it just the two of us really. People still really appreciated it, it's a different thing to the normal set. It's a treat for people if they want it. If not, f*** off!
-Were you pleased with the reaction to the last record?
Arya: Very pleased. It's, I think, my favourite record we've done by far actually. Until now, my favourite was the second album, so I'm really stoked with how much I'm in the love with it.
The fans seems to be in love with it too, which is great. The last tour we were playing 6 new tracks. We hadn't done that for ages, that many new songs in a set. It's given a new energy to it all.
-Do you try to a find a ballance between new and old?
Arya: That's the thing, yeah. The headline tour is different because it's our show. You can get away with way more because people are coming to see you specifically. I think with something like this-
Mikey: You're in somebody elses house, aren't you?
Arya: You don't have to play them, but it's good to give what you think are the hits.
Mikey: You want to be crowd-pleasing and appeal to the people who are there who maybe haven't head of you.
Arya: It tends to be the singles or the video singles. If someone doesn't know you but may have seen it on TV, you can sway them with the live show.
-Does it get tiresome having to play the hits?
Arya: I still enjoy them just as much. I think if people weren't giving a good reaction to them, then it would be tiring.
We do this thing where we send out on the website, MySpace, Facebook and let people pick the set-list. It's usually the same bloody songs we'd pick!
Every once in a while we'll put in an oldie, a b-side, something new, a cover, but I love doing the hits.
Mikey: We do stuff to our own songs which keep them a bit original. We change them up, insert weird Middle 8s of other people's songs in there, just to keep people guessing.
-Are you looking forward to touring round Europe soon?
Arya: I can't wait, mate. What you'll see here on the Download poster...all these bands are doing the same circuit.
If you haven't made friends with them today, you'll probably see them in a few days or a couple of weeks and it's pretty cool. I forget how much fun the festival season is actually.
Mikey: It's just a couple of these every weekend for the rest of the summer, which is pretty surreal.
-You're very diverse with your sound and influences. Where do you draw on for them?
Arya: All sorts, really. We're all into different bands and music styles. My favourite bands are like Queen, Led Zepplin, Guns N' Roses. I grew up on, predominently, rock music.
As I got older I got into more dancey stuff. We all listen to reggae, we all listen to punk. It's just a mish-mash of everything. I don't think we're musical nazis.
Mikey: You can't kick things out, can you? You've got to include everything. Some things work, some things don't.
Arya: I was a die-hard rock fan growing up. If we were all like that, we'd sound the same as all the other bands.
-What are your plans for the rest of the year?
Arya: Getting pissed. Basically, we want to release the album in different countries, tour in Europe over summer, get back to America.
We're going to try and break it everywhere else. We've not been to America in a couple of years, so we're hoping we can get back there and tour hard.
-Is it hard trying to break elsewhere?
Arya: Yeah it is. In American it's still a lot about radio, for a band like us. When we started out it was very much all about radio play. Obviously, there's a very big underground scene but we were never a part of that.
We were in the active rock scene. If they start playing your song on the radio it could change your whole career.
It's pretty huge, so...if the song picks up and blows up over there, then wicked. If it doesn't, we'll just tour anyway. We're going to go over there and see what happens.
Female First - Alistair McGeorge
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