- Where did the name The Travelling Band come from?
Jo: We love playing live obviously, most bands do and those who don’t need to get their head out their arse and do something else. But the name stuck early because of the three bands we were born out of going off on tour.
We went to Cornwall on the tour and had this idea about having this supergroup, so the three bands getting on stage and that would be the Travelling Band and it stuck. So we never really sat down and had this whole discussion about it.
Some people think we’re gypsies, not that there’s anything wrong with being a gypsy or a traveller, but they get the wrong end of the stick when we call ourselves The Travelling Band.
- The name fits the music perfectly though - was the sound developed before the name?
Adam: I would say so, I don’t think it was really in conjunction with the name, it was more of an idea that someone, who actually isn’t in the band, came up with.
- Your second album Screaming is Something is out at the end of the month, what kind of progression can we expect to see from the debut?
Jo: Well we were loosely a jam band when we started and recording the first album was the first time we recorded together. It whittled down to six guys in a room so there was very little time spent pre-planning it.
But it had the energy of some more traditional recording methods where you would just learn the song and go in and do it and we recorded all the vocals live so a lot of it was quite understated.
With this record we’ve definitely tried to be a lot more ambitious with some of the arrangements and the textures and we’ve also been producing it so as a band we’ve had that control over the songs and the way the album works.
It’s a more epic record I think, it’s more direct and I think that songs are better, the arrangements are better and it’s just a better record all round.
- What’s the lyrical content of the album?
Adam: It’s quite broad, anything from infidelity to the inevitability of death really, it has it’s lighter moments as well but I think I lot of people get into our music and see it as quite joyous and happy but when you get into the lyrical side of it a bit more you see there’s a bit more to it than that.
It’s hard to sum-up because we have different songwriters so there’s different themes approached by different people. But lyrically for me, the listener is always involved. When someone hears a lyric it can mean something completely different for someone else, so it’s up to the listener to make that decision as well.
Jo: I think it’s got that more morose side of our personalities in it but I think all the songs have that little bit of hope in them.
- What can we expect from the set tonight?
Jo: I think we’re going to concentrate on playing tunes off the new record. I think it’ll be pretty upbeat and we’ll probably have some far out moments, we’ll just see what happens I guess.
This will be the fourth gig of the tour and it’s going great. We’re still sort of working it out because we were off the road for a while.
Adam: We’re just settling back in and the screws are tightening but we played in Leicester last night and gigs have been getting gradually better so that’s going to stand us in good stead for tonight.
Jo: We started in London and Manchester though and I think in the future we should leave them until last
- What other acts are you looking forward to seeing?
Adam: Badly Drawn Boy definitely. It will be nice to see Damon.
Jo: And Joe Rose tomorrow, there’s loads of good stuff. We’re going to see it through, we might have to go home on Sunday night and make sure we’re rested up for our Preston gig but you’ll see us at a campfire at some point.
Adam: Well that’s after the Rapture, I think there’ll be a few campfires after that.
Jo: Well me and Adam like to think we’re on the good side of the apocalypse.
Interview by Antonia Charlesworth